The Gateway Arch Museum has been selected as one of four “statement-making museums across the U.S.” in the December issue of Hospitality Design:

“After winning The City + Arch + The River 2015 international design competition, New York firms Cooper Robertson and James Carpenter Design Associates, with locally based Trivers Associates, are designing a renovated and expanded Gateway Arch Museum and Visitor Center in St. Louis. The challenge was not only to update it with a more contemporary vocabulary but also to make the underground venue–located at the base of Eero Saarinen’s iconic Gateway Arch–more visible. That includes a reimagined entrance built into a grassy berm that will open up to an expanded Luther Ely Smith Square stretching over the highway.

‘The design strengthens the physical connections between the city and the arch with a dynamic, linear plan that takes visitors from the entry and culminates in a tram ride to the Top of the Arch, with nearly 45,000 square feet of new museum space,’ says Scott Newman, a partner at Cooper Robertson, who leads the firm’s cultural and educational practice. ‘The trip through the exhibit merges seamlessly with the trip up the Arch, offering context for the big views of St. Louis, the river, and to the west.’”

Read more at Hospitality Design.