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Architectural Record, August 2003

In contrast to the intimidating opacity of the old bank building, visitors to the new museum enter a long, double height lobby that offers a view all the way through the museum to a window framing the freeway overpass beyond. The sensual effect of a courtyard, opening to the right of the axis, sums up much of what Predock intends for the museum experience. In this wedge of outdoor space, masonry-design specialist Richard Rhodes has created an installation- a stone garden using 500-year-old granite pavers salvaged from a rural area in China that will be flooded upon completion of the Three Gorges Dam. The stones take the form of a liquid topography that appears to slosh up against the courtyard walls.

Predock faced the court with flush-mounted, mirror-finish glass, which multiplies and diffuses Rhodes’s composition. “Through reflections, the void of the courtyard takes on substance and becomes an object,” says Predock. To understand the mysterious, intangible qualities of this space, contrast it to Arthur Erickson’s nearby Museum of Glass, which pays all-too-literal tribute to Mt. Rainier with a conical steel roof.