Architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro has arranged the galleries of the US Olympic and Paralympic Museum in Colorado, which opens this week, around a spiralling ramp to make it one of the most accessible museums in the world.
Located in downtown Colorado Springs, the museum is composed of four steel-covered volumes arranged in a pinwheel formation that contain the galleries, an auditorium and events space.
The four volumes are wrapped in a steel superstructure that appears to fold over glazing on the ground floor, with vertical windows extending to the top of the building.

"We conceived of it as almost like a garment that was like a little bit like an Olympic athlete's costume stretched over the structure," said Diller Scofidio + Renfro partner-in-charge Benjamin Gilmartin. "It kind of warps and twists with these surfaces that give it a kind of tautness. It is really meant to be a tailored garment on the outside of the building that is perfectly fitted."
The metalwork is composed of 9,000 diamond-shaped panels that are marked in the middle and lift up in the centre to create a play of light and shadow across the facade.

"The folding of the diamond into triangles was just the initial idea," Gilmartin continued.
"But then we played with the shaping, we did a lot of model testing, digital studies and things like that and found that it has a really nice reaction to light. The kind of fold in the panels makes a kind of highlight with th...