{"id":5204,"date":"2014-11-04T13:00:02","date_gmt":"2014-11-04T17:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/national\/?p=5204"},"modified":"2014-11-04T14:37:43","modified_gmt":"2014-11-04T18:37:43","slug":"book-review-architecture-art-museums-decade-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/national\/2014\/11\/04\/book-review-architecture-art-museums-decade-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review – The Architecture of Art Museums: A Decade of Design"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/em><\/p>\n

As a building type, art museums are unparalleled for the opportunities they provide for architectural investigation and experimentation. They are frequently key components of urban revitalization and often push the limits of building technology. Art museums are places of pleasure, education, and contemplation. They are remarkable by their prominence and sheer quality, and their lessons are useful for all architects and for all building types.<\/em><\/p>\n

– From the Foreword<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Written by\u00a0Ronnie Self, (<\/strong>Routledge Press, 2014)<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Ronnie Self\u2019s new book on this typology of the spectacle,\u00a0The Architecture of Art Museums<\/em><\/a> presents\u00a0eighteen of the most formidable\u00a0galleries realized in the last fourteen years. The book includes two each by Herzog & de Meuron<\/a>, SANAA<\/a> and Zaha Hadid<\/a>,\u00a0all presented in plan, elevation, and section, several even with construction details.\u00a0With a brief essay and colour photographs for every project, standouts include the Akron Art Museum<\/a> by Coop Himmelb(l)au<\/a> and Acropolis Museum<\/a> by Bernard Tschumi<\/a>. And so with Vancouver soon to be home to a new gallery of the highest order, Mr. Self\u2019s book is\u00a0the perfect\u00a0primer on the subject for both neophyte and admirer alike.<\/p>\n

As explained by the author in the introduction, the majority of the book is comprised of articles written for the French magazine Archicree <\/em>between 2000 and 2010, the majority of which just happened to be on art museums as the magazine was writing on the leading works of the day.<\/p>\n

The book reads chronologically then, with museums by Tadao Ando<\/a>, Zaha Hadid<\/a>, and Peter\u00a0Cook <\/a>starting things off\u00a0and effectively introducing us to the spectrum of the typology. The differences between them set the tone for the discussion\u00a0in the pages that follow.<\/p>\n

Starting with Ando\u2019s stoic and restrained Modern Art Museum<\/a> in Fort Worth, we look next at the wolf in sheep\u2019s clothing that is Hadid\u2019s Cincinnati art gallery<\/a>, followed by the hallucinatory, Archigram-induced revelry\u00a0that is\u00a0the Kunsthaus Graf<\/a> – a building whose extroverted exterior threatens to outdo the art within. As the author points out about Ando\u2019s building, with Louis Kahn\u2019s Kimbell Art Museum<\/a> directly across the street (one of the earliest and best examples of the building type at its time in America),\u00a0 anyone visiting his contemplative gallery with its signature bare concrete walls and vast reflecting pool\u00a0would almost certainly have already stood beneath Kahn\u2019s barrel vaults.<\/p>\n

The next three galleries are\u00a0examples of the utilitarian art gallery – following Mies\u2019 credo that form follows function –<\/em> and each ultimately presents a pragmatic face to their host cities, as thoughtful material solutions to their inwardly complex programs. Such can be seen in Renzo Piano\u2019s elaborate roof screens in his Nasher Center<\/a> in Dallas, while the drawing sections of the gallery invoke his Centre Pompidou<\/a> in Paris.<\/p>\n

Taniguchi\u2019s renovation of the MoMA<\/a> is just as much a statement on the institution of modern art museums as it is an architectural achievement. Similarly, many of the buildings throughout the book are the result of art gallery societies needing a modern re-branding of their legacy, with the MoMA\u2019s facelift in 2004 very much emblematic of this spirit.<\/p>\n

The next chapter on Herzog and de Meuron\u2019s Walker Center<\/a> includes a discussion on the same building\u2019s original architect, Edward Larrabee Barnes, known for several art museums he designed across America. The architect met Herzog and de Meuron when they were shortlisted as architects for the MoMA expansion, which Taniguchi won. Similarly, as Barnes was on the jury for the MoMA in New York, he was on the selection committee in San Francisco that chose Herzog and de Meuron for the de Young Museum.\u00a0It was not long after that\u00a0when they were asked to design a significant addition to the Walker gallery, which Barnes himself originally designed in 1971.<\/p>\n

The following three art museums look at\u00a0the gallery as an object in the city,\u00a0with each building making an outward statement as well as providing an important centre for housing its art. In the case of these three galleries by Jean Nouvel, Herzog and de Meuron, and SANAA, the architects have given their host cities \u2013 Madrid, San Francisco, and Toledo, respectively \u2013 an art museum in which the building itself has become a part of the collection.<\/p>\n

Even more, the architecture is allowed to play a part in the restoration of some past misfortune, as Nouvel\u2019s addition to the Reina Sofia\u00a0Madrid<\/a> museum provided for the institution which had brought Picasso\u2019s Guernica to the city post-Franco in 1992. Similarly,\u00a0 Herzog and de Meuron\u2019s new building replaced the de Young\u2019s <\/a>original building, badly damaged in the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 (the gallery\u2019s tower is a reference to the tower in the original building).<\/p>\n

The Toledo Glass Museum<\/a>, designed by the Pritzker winning office SANAA, is the evolution of the art museum to a sublime fun-house, as what appears as a box-like glass building on the outside is an amorphous sequence of spaces within. With delicious curving glass walls, the exercise is one in making the obvious disappear – joint, mullions and all – with\u00a0the author including some of the architectural window wall details. SANAA and their exquisite attention to detail is also evident in their New York gallery, featured later on\u00a0in the book.<\/p>\n

Chapters ten through to thirteen demonstrate architecture\u2019s ability to challenge the physics of the building form, as the gravity defying expressions of Coop Himmelb(l)au, Diller Scofidio + Renfro<\/a>, and Daniel Libeskind attest to. In Denver, Studio Libeskind<\/a> gave the city an inverted and fractured glass prism, the result of a competition whose shortlist included Steven Holl and Robert Venturi.<\/p>\n

In Akron, Ohio, another design competition \u2013 this one with over 130\u00a0entries \u2013 yielded Coop Himmelb(l)au\u2019s solution<\/a> to a complex site and program, tying\u00a0together\u00a0existing buildings, including the city\u2019s old post office, with a new gallery building, all\u00a0covered in a massive cantilevered structure called the Roof Cloud.<\/p>\n

Steven Holl\u2019s Kansas City gallery<\/a> distinguishes itself from these other\u00a0gravity defying acts of architecture by appealing more to the diurnal aspect of architecture, with the galleries appearing in the nightscape as magically glowing volumes. This phenomenological aspect of architecture is a recurring theme in Holl\u2019s work, and so it is no surprise to see it as the driver of\u00a0his design.<\/p>\n

The remainder of the book is rounded out by some of architecture\u2019s recent heavyweights: SANAA\u2019s New Museum<\/a> in New York, Bernard Tschumi\u2019s Acropolis Museum, and Zaha Hadid\u2019s MAXXI Museum<\/a>. Zaha mentions at one point that several of the competitions for most of the museums in the book were happening concurrently, that she herself was working on the MAXXI competition at\u00a0the same time she was working on the Madrid one (that went to Nouvel) along with the Kunsthaus (that went to Peter Cook).<\/p>\n

In the end, the book effectively demonstrates the importance of this particular building type\u00a0for the stretching of one\u2019s architectural legs.\u00a0 History also shows us some of the most innovative solutions to the typology, also equally\u00a0as controversial, such as Frank Lloyd Wright\u2019s spiral for his\u00a0Guggenheim in New York, Rogers and Piano’s Pompidou in Paris,\u00a0and Gehry\u2019s\u00a0cacophonous spectacle\u00a0of titanium\u00a0in Bilbao.<\/p>\n

Indeed, many of the galleries featured in the book are art institutions\u00a0seeking\u00a0the same success\u00a0as Bilbao,\u00a0each city\u00a0looking to reinvent part of\u00a0its urban fabric with a new stand-alone art museum. As well, there are also a number of galleries featured here that are additions to existing galleries, while other are new buildings being inserted into a dense urban fabric – such as the MAXXI, Kuntshaus, and MoMA – providing insight into how to navigate a tight inner city site with a complex building program.<\/p>\n

These and many more lessons on this building typology make the Architecture of Art Museums \u2013 A Decade of Design<\/em><\/a> a valuable addition to one\u2019s architecture tool belt, and serendipitous as Metro Vancouver is poised to realize a new stand-alone art museum\u00a0 for the heart of\u00a0its downtown.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

For more information on Architecture of Art Museums \u2013 A Decade of Design<\/strong>, visit the Routledge website<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

Sean Ruthen<\/em><\/strong> is a Vancouver-based architect and writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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