The Menil Collection was recently designated as one of the ten best buildings in Texas by Texas Monthly in their March 2009 issue.  It shared this honor with other notable structures including The Alamo in San Antonio, “Old Red” at UTMB in Galveston, and the Penzoil Building in Houston.  Haynes Whaley Associates was the structural engineer of record for The Menil Collection. It opened in 1987 and was a pivotal project for our firm. Larry Whaley and I had the opportunity to work directly with Renzo Piano and others for several years on this unique building. Its signature feature is the gallery roof — a system of ferrocement leaves working together with ductile cast iron truss units to form a structural system supporting the glass skylight roof and providing control of the daylight entering the museum. Full-scale load tests were conducted in the United Kingdom to confirm the load carrying capacity of the system. Today this roof structural system remains unique in the world. 

The Menil Collection proved to be an important architectural and structural achievement, and showed the way that a new generation of modernist buildings could be more compatible with their surroundings.