Barnes chooses its design team

The long journey of the Barnes Foundation from suburban Merion to downtown Philadelphia, which began six years ago with a financial crisis and a protracted legal battle, reached another milestone yesterday when the board announced that architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien will design a new home on the Parkway for the renowned collection of Impressionist art.

In choosing the New York-based husband-and-wife team, the Barnes has found architects especially skilled at marrying poetic modernist spaces and hands-on craftsmanship, with floor plans of Escher-like complexity. That makes them a good fit for the Barnes, which is obliged by the courts to replicate its idiosyncratic 1920s galleries that now house the collection in a much larger shell that will be outfitted with the accoutrements of a modern museum.

Their work also reflects the aesthetic tastes championed by the foundation's namesake, Albert Barnes. Although he was among the first collectors to recognize the importance of modernist artists such as Matisse, Cezanne and Renoir, he was equally passionate about vernacular crafts, and insisted that high-art and homey objects be displayed side-by-side. Williams and Tsien similarly knit together cutting-edge spatial ideas and artisanal materials.

Yesterday's announcement came right on the Barnes's self-imposed deadline, despite the filing of fresh lawsuits last month aimed at stopping the move. After an five-month review of six of the world's top design firms, the Barnes board voted unanimously Saturday to hire Williams and Tsien, according to Aileen Kennedy Roberts, who chairs the building committee.

She said the board was swayed as much by the pair's willingness to carry out the court's unusual architectural instructions as by the grace, effectiveness, and stylistic innovation of their buildings, which include the American Folk Art Museum in New York, the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, Calif., and the Skirkanich Hall labs at the University of Pennsylvania.

Williams and Tsien were the only finalists to have completed a Philadelphia building, and it is easily among the city's best new designs. Their Barnes will have to nestle in among the other monumental buildings on the Parkway.

"All the architects on the short list were great, but for this particular project they were the right architects," Roberts said. "They're creative, and they understand complexity."