Wagner Murray Architects

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    Structural Pillar

    The lone column standing in the plaza of Mario Botta's Bechtler Museum of Art is structurally necessary, but its girth is an illusion.

    3 MIN READ
    A lone column keeps silent sentry in the plaza of Charlotte, N.C.'s Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, which opened in January. Although the 47-foot-tall pillar is structurally necessary and part of the overall column grid, its girth is deceptive—a convex steel armature encloses the load-bearing concrete column within and supports a skin of terra-cotta tiles—and is meant to convey the building's massiveness.

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