Watch how the 9,000 titanium panels of the Frederic C. Hamilton Building, architect Daniel Libeskind's 2006 expansion, shift color as clouds move overhead. Libeskind, who had recently won the competition to design the World Trade Center site master plan in New York, brought to Denver the same angular, dissonant aesthetic that made his Jewish Museum in Berlin one of the most discussed museum buildings in the world. The Hamilton Building consists of sharp, irregular geometric forms sheathed in 9,000 titanium panels that shift in color as clouds move over the Colorado sky.
The interior spaces are deliberately unstable: floors tilt, walls lean, and galleries are oddly shaped, so the visitor is never quite sure where the next room leads. Libeskind argued that this disorientation is appropriate to a museum — art should challenge comfortable expectations, and the building should do the same. Critics countered that the architecture competes with and sometimes overwhelms the art inside.
Walk around the exterior and watch how the titanium panels shift from silver to gold to faint rose as afternoon light moves across them. The juxtaposition with Ponti's tile tower next door is intentional and unresolved.