Art lovers visiting the new art museum in Akron, OH will want to take a few minutes to study the elevator enclosure. It’s a formed concrete work of art that will be on permanent display.

The completed elevator will provide vertical transportation to passengers going from floor to floor in the new 3-story museum, buts tha’s not obvious when looking at the walls surrounding the elevator from a distance. Described as a structural trapezoid, the 57 ft tall elevator enclosure is a 14 in. thickness of cast-in-place reinforced concrete.

The elevator (and surrounding museum project) was designed by the architectural team of Coop Himmelb (1) au LLC, Vienna Austria and Westlake Reed Leskosky, Cleveland, OH, with structural engineering by DeSimone Consulting Engineers, San Francisco, CA. Welty Building Company, of Akron, is the construction manager for the project owner, the Akron Art Museum.

It’s certainly a challenge to design an architectural structure that will satisfy the discriminating tastes of art experts. That can also be a challeng for the builders.

For this project, bringing to life the architects’ elevator vision required the work of another “artistic” team, comprised of a concrete contractor, Parsons Concrete, of North Canton, OH, a contractor supply company, Waco Equipment, of Akron and a form designer, Harry Stamaty, of Detail by Design, Columbus OH.