Locally designed art museums
An overview of projects, products and exclusive articles about locally designed art museums
Project • By Axis Mundi • Museums
The Whitney Museum of Art
New YorkWhy shouldn’t a museum building be as inspired and exciting as the art it holds? Why are we perpetually conceiving them as collections of white boxes locked within a grid structure? Axis Mundi breaks free of this form with its self-initiated proposal for the Whitney Downtown, experimenting—like all good art—with a more creative and challenging design. A dramatically irregular superstructure constitutes a perimeter lattice that conceals staircases, escalators, elevators and mechanical rooms. Column-free glass galleries are suspended like bridges from this lattice. In this way, the building more closely mirrors the actual creative process. We can imagine the irregular superstructure as the chaotic consciousness of the artist, within w... More
Project • By aceboXalonso Studio • Cultural Centres
Arts Centre of A Coruna Museum and Dance School.
The Madrid based architecture studio of Victoria Acebo and Ángel Alonso were the winners of the Premio de Arquitectura Joven (young architects prize), and their design for the Arts Centre in A Coruña was selected 'for the interesting architectural result of a mixed programme with dance and museum realised in one volume, which has a formal clarity.' Under the same name of Arts Centre, 2 different entities have found their place: a School for Dance and a Museum. The lower area which has a concrete façade is where the dance school is located, and the higher floors, with a glass façade contains the spaces of museum. Without any concessions to each other, both parties are combined in a singular image, with combined organisation.
Nowadays, the b... More
Project • By studio 8 1/2 • Concert Halls
Museum of Contemporary Art
The architecture of the complex and its sculpture groups would be a very strong starting point for the development of the Museum of Contemporary Art that could be successfully woven into one modern place in the urban environment. The easy access and the proximity to the favorite park of the people on Plovdiv is an advantage for the future complex. The remoteness from the town’s center is the latest trend in the designing of buildings of culture, where lamination of similar cultural centers in different spots in the town is sought on purpose. The future museum complex will serve as a counterpoint to the consumers’ culture, which has found its “temple” building in the recently built Mall Plovdiv, just across the street. More
Project • By EDGE studio • Museums
Erie Art Museum
The renovation and expansion of the Erie Art Museum, which opened in October 2010, redefined the museum as a recurring destination for the community. With a goal of obtaining gold LEED certification, the building will be the first LEED designed project in Erie County. The project provides the museum with an innovative and recognizable building image consistent with the organization’s mission and goals. The museum, in addition to exhibiting curated art in a gallery environment, has always supported environmental art in installation settings. The addition provides the museum with a building identity reflecting this value. The project, located in downtown Erie, includes a new entry and public space, new spaces for permanent and traveling e... More
Project • By Kyu Sung Woo Architects • Museums
Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art
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
Project • By E2A Piet Eckert und Wim Eckert Architekten • Museums
Kunsthaus Zurich
The new Kunsthaus forms an urban threshold between the existing Kunsthaus Zurich and Zurich?s university district. The new buildings core is a naturally lit vertical void. It acts as an orienting device, providing an overview of current exhibitions and activities, and it is dedicated to big scale art installations. Subsequently, a large outdoor open space functions as a stage for art allowing various curatorial possibilities and marking the prelude to the university district. The direct, sequential order: existing building, void and the stage for art, establishes an intense and multi-faceted interface for art and the public. More
Project • By Atsushi Kitagawara Architects • Wellness Centres
Nakamura Keith Haring Art Museum
`Keith’s works embody pop, upbeat, cheerful expressions, but also have an extremely serious facet under which lurk social anxiety and fear, human insanity and absurdity, and life’s dignity and fragility, all in a bottomless darkness. A special kind of presentation was necessary for the door to open into this darkness.’
By Atsushi Kitagawara, article in GA Document 98 (Tokyo,2007)
Located at the foot of the Southern Japanese Alps the site is surrounded by wild trees such as oak, mountain cherry, larch and red pine. The building complex is divided into a museum block and a spa block. During the design process special care has been taken to respect the natural environment. Thus each block consists of single storey buildings carefully posit... More
Project • By Lucio Morini • Museums
Provincial Museum of Fine Arts EMILIO CARAFFA
The renovated Emilio Caraffa Museum, which annexes the former Physical Education Institute building (IPEF), is part of a larger complex that includes the new Palacio Ferreyra Museum. The new Caraffa Museum includes a great variety of exhibition rooms, mainly for temporary exhibitions, as well as facilities for the technical support of the complex (that is, for cataloguing, classification, research, restoration, safekeeping, library, administration, exhibition, curation, programming, design, etc.).
The original project for the building now housing the Museum was commissioned to Hungarian architect Johannes Kronfuss, who developed the design circa 1915 using a Neoclassical approach. However, when construction ended in 1916, only a fourt... More
Project • By Camilo Rebelo • Museums
MAAVC
authors: Camilo Rebelo and Tiago Pimentel
To build the Museum of Art and Archaeology of the Côa Valley we connected different parameters: topography, accessibilities and program. The fusion of these aspects was highly important for the concept definition – to conceive a museum as an installation on the landscape.
The topography was crucial in our decisions since we had to deal with an enormous difference between the museum entrance and the interior of the building. The arrival is made at the top of this topography and that was one of the reasons to create a platform, a terrace, a belvedere – the stage scenario is the huge and impressive landscape with mountains and valleys. The arrival, a contemplation mo... More
Randers Museum of Art
3XN’s first prize proposal for a new Randers Museum of Art consists of a building on one level, rising up towards each end and traversed by a diagonal with a mezzanine deck running full length through the exhibition building. The diagonal creates a bridge between the permanent exhibition
and the temporary exhibition and simultaneously divides the building into front-of-house and back of-house zones. The internal flow is a continuation of the external flow of its surroundings – the city of Randers, and the new
sculpture park by the Gudenå river to be created with the new museum building. With its high glazed areas drawing daylight and countryside into the building and opening up under a roof vault clad with red, semi glazed tiles the build... More
Project • By Riken Yamamoto • Museums
yokosuka museum of art
Through a Quality Based Selection in 2002, which was the first trial run by the city of Yokosuka as a Japanese municipality, we were chosen to plan a museum. The design started from scratch, and was developed through discussions with many people, including museum curators, for over 2 years.
Facing the sea to the north and surrounded by mountains, the site has the valley topography typical of Yokosuka. We buried most of the architectural volume in the ground to create a museum in communication with the natural landscape. The interior space is planned as nested boxes: the edge part is for open public facilities such as restaurants and workshop rooms; the central part is for sensitive facilities for exhibition and collection. This system solv... More
Project • By DnA Design and Architecture • Art Galleries
Ordos Art museum
Ordos Art Museum is the first building of Ordos’ new civic center on a stretch of sand dunes along the lake that is dedicated as a “public corridor” with art and cultural facilities. This 29,000 sq.ft. of exhibition and research space is distributed within an undulating form with a central span lifting clear off the ground, suggesting a desert viper winding over the dunes.
The space is conceived as one uninterrupted room with a series of openings absorbing natural light while offering cinematic views of the raw surroundings; the art exhibition mingles with the natural landscape that becomes an integrated experience for views.
More
Project • By Rick Mather Architects • Museums
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Rick Mather Architects were selected from an international field of competitors in 2001 to masterplan and design a major expansion and renovation of this highly reputed, 65 year old encyclopaedic museum and its 5.5 hectare (13.5 acre) campus. This marks the office's first major commission in the United States. The project was delivered in collaboration with SMBW Architects, a Richmond-based firm.
The expansion plan adds more than 9300m² (100,000 sq.ft) to the existing 22300m² (240,000 sq.ft) building. Completed in April 2010, the new museum complex includes a 1.6 hectare (4 acre) sculpture garden, extensive new galleries, educational facilities, restaurant, cafe, library, administrative offices and a landscaped, terraced parking deck.... More