Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway has a new kind of building on it, one that tries hard not to look like a museum. Calder Gardens, a $90 million project from Herzog & de Meuron with landscapes by Piet Oudolf, opened in 2025 as a largely subterranean home for the work of sculptor Alexander Calder, the artist behind the modern mobile.
Project Scope
The 18,000-square-foot structure reads as a low, barn-like volume above ground, with the bulk of the gallery experience set below grade. LF Driscoll built it, with Ballinger as architect of record and Herzog & de Meuron driving a deliberately understated design the firm has described as nearly “no-design.” The budget more than doubled from an initial $40 million estimate to $90 million, with $20 million from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Piet Oudolf’s planting wraps the building in a garden meant to shift with the seasons.
Why It Matters
Calder Gardens adds to Philadelphia’s “Museum Mile” with a building that bets on restraint over spectacle, a counterpoint to the trophy-architecture museum boom. The subterranean galleries and naturalistic garden made for a technically tricky build on a tight Parkway site. The cost overrun is its own lesson in how ambitious cultural projects tend to run, but the result is one of the more talked-about small institutions to open in years.
Project Team & Details
| Owner / Client | Calder Gardens |
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| Architect | Herzog & de Meuron |
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| Consultants | Ballinger (Architect of Record)
Piet Oudolf (Landscape) |
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| General Contractor | LF Driscoll |
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| Status | Completed |
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| Funding Source | Mixed |
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