UNL architecture students to propose solutions for Union Pacific museum

University of Nebraska-Lincoln architecture students enrolled in Architecture 410 tectonics will propose solutions for a speculative Museum of the Union Pacific at a final jury 12:30 p.m. Dec. 10 in the Architecture Hall Gallery (Room 210), 10th and R streets on the UNL City Campus.

The jury and exhibition of student work is free and open to the public.

As the automobile began rising in popularity, passenger ridership on railroad companies began to plummet. Many railroad companies remained committed to its familiar business model of passenger service, and ended in bankruptcy. While the Union Pacific Railroad, headquartered in Omaha, was one of the railroad companies to strategically expand its business model to include the shipping of freight, its last passenger train left the Omaha Union Station in May 1971. In 1973, the Union Pacific Corp. donated the building to the city of Omaha. In 1996, the Union Pacific Museum moved from its location in the UP headquarters building to the Western Heritage Museum. However, the museum moved again in 2003 to Council Bluffs. This current museum, which displays many historically significant artifacts from UP history, is housed in a former library building commissioned by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie and is approximately 30,000 square feet in size.

In addition to its excellent exhibits on the history of the Union Pacific from the 19th century to the 21st, the UPRM also houses the Union Pacific's photographic archives, exhibit storage, and a gift shop. However, the UPRM in Council Bluffs does not include any full-scale locomotives, train cars, or other railroad infrastructure. The intent of this studio project is to generate speculative proposals for a new Museum of the Union Pacific. This new facility would unite various Union Pacific artifacts through the physical consolidation of the existing Union Pacific Railroad Museum collection, the Big Boy and Centennial locomotives found at Kenefick Park, and the existing exhibits at the Durham Museum. This project aspires to be the premiere railroad museum of its kind in the nation, across the multiple terms of architectural excellence, curatorial excellence and overall patron experience.

"I realize there has been considerable energy invested in de-centralizing the Union Pacific collection towards increasing its public visibility," architecture professor and course instructor Chris Ford said. "However, this design problem was an opportunity for the studio to investigate the advantages of consolidating this collection while offering a critique of urban land use in downtown Omaha. When design projects from our College of Architecture, however speculative, not only fulfill curricular goals but also find value in the public realm, then we are finding resonance with the larger Nebraska best-interest we look to serve."

The curricular goal of this Architecture 410 course is to consider architectural tectonics: The strategies for designing various structural, enclosure, mechanical and lighting systems in a deliberate, coherent and intentional way.

The links below are to color JPEG images of the students' designs. The images are identified by the student's name.