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American Air Museum, Duxford, Building, Project, Photo, News, Design, Image
American Air Museum Duxford : Architecture Information
Development by Foster + Partners near Cambridge, England, UK
American Air Museum, Duxford, Cambridge, southeast England, UK
1987-97
Foster + Partners
Photos : Nigel Young_Foster Partners

Duxford airfield in Cambridgeshire was a Battle of Britain fighter
station. Later, as one of a hundred US Airforce bases in Britain,
it was the headquarters of the 78th Fighter Group. Now maintained
by the Imperial War Museum, it has the finest collection of American
aircraft outside the United States. Nineteen of its thirty-eight aircraft
are airworthy and it attracts over 350,000 people each year to its
summer air displays. The centrepiece of the collection is also the
largest - a B-52 bomber.

The brief for the Air Museum looked to create a building that would
commemorate the role of the American Air Force in World War II and
the thousands of airmen who lost their lives. It was also to provide
the optimum enclosure, in terms of humidity levels and UV protection,
for the conservation of the B-52 and twenty other aircraft dating
from World War I to the Gulf War. Equally important, there was also
a desire for the Museum to highlight the take-offs and landings during
air shows and create a window onto the runway.

The dimensions of the B-52 (a 61-metre wingspan and 16-metre-high
tail fin) established the buildings height and width, and provided
the principle axis through which the Museum is entered. Enveloped
by a single vaulted enclosure, the buildings drama comes from the
powerful arc of this roof - engineered to support suspended aircraft
- and the sweep of the glazed southern wall overlooking the runway.
In addition to this fully glazed elevation, a continuous strip of
glass around the base of the vault washes the interior in daylight.
The result is a light and open space, despite the fact that the structure
is partly sunk into the ground, a formal device that has been compared
to the airforces blister hangars, which were designed to be invisible
from the air. In 1998 the Museum won the Stirling Prize RIBA Building
of the Year Award. The jury wrote: The success of this project lies
in the resonance between the elegant engineered form of the building
and the technically driven shapes of the aeroplanes. The building
itself sustains the fascination of these objects.

Client: Imperial War Museum at Duxford, American Air Museum in Britain
Consultants: Ove Arup & Partners, Davis Langdon and Everest, Roger
Preston & Partners, Aerospace Structural and Mechanical Engineering,
Hannah Reed and Associates, Rutherford Consultants

American Air Museum Duxford images / information from Foster +
Partners
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Cambridge Architecture
Duxford Air Museum : Stirling
Prize Winner 1998
American Air Museum architect
: Foster + Partners
Museum Buildings
Buildings by Foster + Partners
Beijing Airport Building
Smithsonian Institute
City of Justice Madrid

World Architecture : e-architect
- key buildings across the globe
Comments / photos for the American Air Museum England Architecture page
welcome:
info@e-architect.co.uk
American Air Museum Cambridge Building : page
- adrian welch / isabelle lomholt |
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