From dezeen magazine, new art galleries around the world …
Construction has started on an art museum with four overlapping peaks that Foster + Partners have designed for Datong, China.
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The recently opened new wing at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, which has a dramatically faceted atrium piercing its centre
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Links, credits, background and more photos can be found under listings here.
I’m not at all sure about art galleries/museums which try very hard to make a huge statement in themselves. My feeling is that, at least internally, they should give pleasure while providing a background to the objects on display, rather than being themselves the displayed object.
I hope on the committee for chosing the design of the new art gallery – asuming there will be one – there is no one who was on the committee that chose the design for the Vancouver Public Library. We don’t need another embarassment. The great architecture critic and illustrator for the Vancouver Sun, Robin Ward, said that it was a ‘hackneyed folly’.
There was, as far as I am aware, no Roman presence in Vancouver. So we don’t need a Greek theme, or Moorish theme, or Viking theme………
Let’s not let the cous-cous munchers dominate this discussion. This is the West Coast.
“Let’s not let the cous-cous munchers dominate this discussion.”
Care to explain, Tom Durning?
BTW, 70% of the people who voted chose the design by Moshe Safdie for the library. If you don’t want the “cous-cous munchers” to dominate the discussion, do you want a populist process that resulted in the library design’s selection?
I’m very curious about your and others’ views about a good process for such a high-profile initiative that is bound to offend some or many people.
As Brent Toderian recently tweeted, now’s the time to have an invited competition of 3-5 top architectural firms, a mix of established and fresher firms. This will cost significant dollars, as it should. Selecting the “winning” entry is always a dicey process, whoever gets to make it.
The cous-cous remark was tongue-in-cheek Frank. I love most of Safdie’s designs especially Habitat 67 in Montreal which I first saw as a boy and still love. You made good points about the selection process and it will be important and controversial. (If I had my way I’d hand it over to Joe Wai right now for some ideas.) We’ve got some great architects in Vancouver and I hope one of them would be successful. I just don’t really want any more Roman Colosseums; nor Myan temples; nor bell towers or minarets. I’m as much as a dilettante as the next guy. I know what I like and don’t like. I’m not wedded to a west coast theme. Saw Frank Gehry’s Museum of Music in Seattle and thought it was fantastic.
As for the process, at this point I’d like to see Michael Audain or Bob Rennie on any committee. They are ‘patrons of the arts’, have made their money on the west coast and I’m sure their input would be valuable.
I don’t know if you are a local architect, but I’d really like to keep the process and selection local. I think we’re capable of it.
Thanks for clarifying, Tom. Totally agree about faux referential architecture. Underneath the Roman Coliseum skin is a pretty good library. Gehry’s Experience building in Seattle is not one of his best, IMHO. The client’s reference – or was it the architect’s? – to a smashed guitar by Jimi Hendrix as a precedent holds no water for me.
I’m open to a wider net to be cast, at least across Canada.
I am doomed to forever be the lone voice in the room saying “but… I like the Library…”