A contemporary academic building and exhibition center not only brings history to life — it helps safeguard that history for future generations.

This academic center is a contemporary environment in which to teach, study and celebrate history in close proximity to the historic house museum which serves as its namesake. The project complements the site’s agrarian past in its architecture and materials, while inside its modern design supports the most up-to-date requirements for exhibitions, research, archiving, preservation and education.

The new academic center is sited at the end of the historic house’s axial landscape plan to give it a formal relationship to the historic grounds. Architecturally, it adopts the gabled forms of agrarian structures — farmhouses and barns — in a series of volumes that match the scale of the existing buildings, and with a tower that evokes a silo or the turrets of its Victorian neighbors. Rustic materials such as stone, wood and metal roofing are sympathetic to their context, and even contemporary materials like the channel glass and fiber-reinforced cement siding evoke the scale and verticality of traditional board-and-batten construction.

Materials inside also integrate the site’s history with contemporary design. The wood and metal feature stair is exposed to evoke the functionality of working farm buildings, yet is designed with a contemporary level of craft and detailing. The exhibition hall and gallery can be closed off from the reception and prefunction areas with sliding steel partitions that resemble barn doors with richly patinated surfaces. The polished concrete floor and exposed ceilings also evoke more functional precedents.

Throughout, the building focuses views back to the existing museum and its grounds, allowing people to experience history by connecting them to a secluded, preserved, rural oasis within highly developed Union County.