In Allied Works' CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM ST. LOUIS,architecture is understated by design, heightening the viewer'sexperience.

SAINT Louis (Mo.); MISSOURI; UNITED States

Modern-art spaces are contained in highly expressive modern architecture. For example the young, scrappy Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis, Missouri, designed by architect Brad Cloepfil. Cloepfil says that his own dissatisfaction, which parallels that of many artists, is that too much museum architecture "intends to be the subject" of the experience. And keeps reiterating its own ideas at every level and at every moment, what could be a more daring course by designing less a building than a "vessel." One that "prepares the ground" for the experience of art.