Museum design

The new Museum of Liverpool, opening on July 19th will not only tell the story of its importance as one of the World’s great ports or about its cultural influence, such as with the Beatles phenomenon. It will also serve as a meeting point for History, the People of Liverpool and visitors from around the globe. Therefore, according to the Architect, Kim Herforth Nielsen, the structure functions as much more than just a Building or a Museum. The Result of a Rigorous Process As the largest National Museum to be built in the UK in over 100 years, and situated on a UNESCO World Heritage Site next to Liverpool’s famous ’Three Graces,’ Principal Architect and Creative Director at 3XN Kim Herforth Nielsen was fully aware of the magnit... More

“Architecture is a mixture of NOSTALGIA and ANTICIPATION, the co-existence of history and vanguard”. (JEAN BAUDRILLARD)   The new Drawing and Illustration Centre of ABC appears with the will to become an artistic reference at an international level and also a symbol of the cultural offer in Madrid. Jesus Granada Its installation in the building of the old factory in Calle Amaniel, must respond to an intervention that is appropriate for a historical building, without renouncing to express its contemporanean centre nature with a wide cultural and artistic offer linked to the most avant-garde institutions within our context.   The current building provides access from two streets, connecting these with an intern... More

Located in the outlying suburbs of Kansas City, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art is a museum that provides an important center for the interchange between art, culture and education. The design aim of this project was to create a space that would facilitate the mission of the museum. As well as a home for an outstanding collection of art, it is the integration of art with the host institution and the daily life of the students, faculty and visitors. The museum is connected to a technology center by a two story atrium, allowing for public passage through the campus, and its art laden spaces. In addition to the core program, the museum, conceived as part of a larger complex, provides amenities for the entire campus. Galleries are provide... More

This extension to the NZ Maritime Museum is designed to house an exhibition of New Zealand yachting, from early small boats through to NZL32, which first won the America's Cup for this country. NZL32 was gifted to Te Papa, and is now exhibited as a collaboration between Voyager and Te Papa. The alteration expands the building outwards and upwards, in a series of planes which explode the traditional form of the sheds. To the east an extension pushes over the sea, housing a series of beautiful yachts portraying the history of New Zealand small boat sailing. NZL32 is suspended within the main space, within an exhibition entitled 'Blue Water Black Magic', a tribute to the life of Sir Peter Blake and to many aspects of small yacht and off... More

The Canadian Museum of Nature (CMN) was the first purpose built museum in the country. It is now recognized for the interdependence of its learning and research components and a collection that includes 10 million specimens gathered over 150 years. The original building – known as the Victoria Memorial Museum Building (VMMB) - was designed in the Beaux-Arts Style by David Ewart. Shortly after its completion in 1912, the stone tower began to sink into the ground. In 1915, the upper part of the tower was removed to de-load the structure, leaving the base as the main entrance vestibule but consequently diminishing the building’s original composition, and impacting the original clarity of the Beaux Arts plan. The revitalization project showc... More

Fashion Museum in Omotesando is a unique space for engaging with the city, the building and fashion. Unlike typical museum that structures its exhibitions in a static environment where the users ciruculatet within in a linear way, Fashion Museum reverses that notion, where it allows the exhibitions and the users to circulate and interact with each other. This dynamic structure of Fashion Museum allows infinite possibilities of navigating the space in a non-linear format. While the museum also can allow a typical linear organization to understand the history of fashion in chronological order, the unique building feature of mobile platforms allows for various adjacencies of exhibition spaces. This way, one exhibition floor can contain, as... More

Hangzhou urban planning bureau has announced MVRDV winner of the international design competition for the China Comic and Animation Museum (CCAM) in Hangzhou, China. MVRDV won with a design referring to the speech balloon: a series of eight speech balloon shaped volumes create an internally complex museum experience of in total 32.000m2. Part of the project is also a series of parks on islands, a public plaza and a 13.000m2 expo centre. Construction start is envisioned for 2012, the total budget is 92 million Euro. Comics and animations have long been considered a form of entertainment for the younger generations but develop more and more into a sophisticated art form. The initiative for a museum especially for this relatively recent art... More

Museum of Aviation and Aviation Exhibition Park in Krakow, Poland International competition 1st prize 2005 Client: Muzeum Lotnictwa Polskiego Architect: Pysall Ruge Architekten with Bartlomiej Kisielewski The idea of flying, the spirit of the place, the structure of the historic airfield: the new building for the Museum of Aviation takes up these references intellectually and synthesists them into an expressive and emblematic structure. The old hangars set the modular scale for the footprint (60 x 60 m) and the height (12 m) for the new building. Developed from this modular scale, cut out and folded as if made like a paper airplane, a large structure has arisen: triangular wings made of concrete and yet as light as a wind-vane o... More

The history of humanity is tarnished with episodes that have catalyzed the most incomprehensible acts to the human mind…the extermination of mankind by mankind. The Museum of Memory and Tolerance highlights these irrationalities and provides information advocating peaceful and respectful coexistence among all people. It is therefore of great significance that the conceptual design of the building relates to its context. About its Social Importance… The Museum of Memory and Tolerance integrates the remembrance of genocides provoked by racial discrimination (Memory) and the unforgiving legacy that this leaves us with, and must lead us to, respect of others and coexistence in diversity (Tolerance). This museum provides Mexico a space... More

The museum forms the core of the urban upgrading of a slab built over a traffic junction at the edge of Schlossplatz and completed in 1968. The newly-created public space uses several changes of height to create a flowing transition from the new Kleiner Schlossplatz to Königstrasse – with an external flight of steps as a place to stroll around in. A three-storey stone cube for travelling exhibitions is encased in a cube of partially printed white glass with edges 30 metres long. Transparency and usability are an integral part of the design of the cube, which serves as a display case for the museum. The rooftop level with the glassed-in restaurant and events room offers panoramic views of the inner city. A generously dimensioned staircas... More

Fort York, considered the birthplace of Toronto, is a National Historic Site. It represents the single most important visual and contextual cultural heritage link to British military and social history remaining in the City of Toronto. In 2009 Patkau Architects, together with Kearns Mancini Architects, won the international design competition to design a new Visitor Centre on the 18 hectare historic site to commemorate the bicentennial of the War of 1812.  The site, once on the shores of Lake Ontario at Garrison Creek, but now isolated from the lake shore due to the expansion of the city, has an immensely rich archaeological past. To the north is Garrison Common, the site of the Battle of York in 1813 and a potentially rich source... More

The architecture of the Museum of Image and Sound takes Copacabana Beach as its inspiration: its coastline, its wraparound building wall, its mountains, and its distinctive beach promenade designed by Roberto Burle Marx. The promenade captures the key element of the beach—a space of the public in motion—on foot, bicycle and automobile. The building is conceived as an extension of that boulevard, stretched vertically into the museum. The “Vertical Boulevard” gestures toward inclusiveness: it gently traverses indoor and outdoor spaces and branches to make galleries, education programs, spaces of public leisure and entertainment. The building inherits the DNA of Burle Marx but radically reorients his public surface upward into a thickened faça... More

New Building Houses More of Salvador Dalí's Masterworks than any Other World Collection ST. PETERSBURG, Florida — The grand opening for the new Dalí Museum is on January 11, 2011, at 11:11 a.m. Located on a scenic waterfront site in downtown St. Petersburg, Fla., the 68,000-square-foot structure doubles the size of the original 1982 Dalí Museum, a one-story warehouse. Exhibits include oils, watercolors, sketches, sculptures and other works from a 2,140-piece permanent collection. Despite the complex processes required to construct the building, which stands more than 75 feet tall and is adorned by 1,062 unique, triangular glass panels, the $29.8 million building project was completed on time and $700,000 under budget. Construction b... More

Today, at a dedication ceremony, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), unveiled a major redevelopment and new wing designed by Foster + Partners. The masterplan reinstates the original formal axis of the Museum and opens it up to the Back Bay Fens and the linear park designed by Frederick Law Olmsted in 1877. The MFA’s new wing creates 53 new galleries and houses the Art of the Americas collections, one of the premier assemblages of American art. Malcolm Rogers, Ann and Graham Gund Director of the MFA, made the opening address, which was followed by further speeches, including one by Lord Foster, with remarks by United States Senator from Massachusetts, the Honourable Scott Brown, and the Reverend Peter Gomes of Harvard Divinity School... More