Diller Scofidio+Renfro Take on Exhibition Design at the Cooper-Hewitt
A billboard announces the Cooper-Hewitt museum is under renovation.
Design studio Diller Scofidio+Renfro (DS+R) has certainly had a very good week. As we noted yesterday, the firm’s designs for the Columbia University Medical and Graduate Education Building in Washington Heights have just been released, and now today, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum has announced that DS+R will be working with museum staff on the redesign of the museum’s exhibition spaces that are currently under renovation on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
City Bringing Culture to St. George Ferry Terminal
A view of Building 11 from 1978. "Staten Island Coast Guard Station", Marilyn Schwartz. (Courtesy Museum of the City of New York)
The New York City Economic Development Corporation has announced a Request for Proposals (RFP) for the lease and operation of a cultural facility adjacent the St. George Ferry Terminal on Staten Island. Building 11, one of several buildings that housed the Coast Guard’s lighthouse operations from 1836 to 1966, was recently renovated by the city as part of a campaign to revitalize Staten Island’s North Shore waterfront.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston announced today that architect Steven Holl was selected to build a new building on a two-acre parking lot in the city’s Museum District, besting Morphosis and Snøhetta. Situated among other structures by Mies van der Rohe, Raphael Moneo, and a sculpture garden by Isamu Noguchi, Holl’s building dedicated to art after 1900 will help unify the campus. According to MFAH Director Gary Tinterow, “Everyone on the committee was deeply impressed by the intelligence and beauty of their museum projects, and we feel certain that they will conceive a design that will match the clarity and elegance of our existing architectural landmarks.”
NY Historical Society Opens Museum & Library for Kids
The new exhibit includes interactive and educational games to engage.
The lower level of the New York Historical Society was lively last Friday morning at the ribbon cutting for the new DiMenna Children’s History Museum and the Barbara K. Lipman Children’s History Library. Young New Yorkers were trying out a number of new, interactive activities in the vibrant 4,000 square-foot vaulted space.
Letter from Rome: YAP Opening Night at the MAXXI
stARTT's illuminated fiberglass flowers (Courtesy James Stevens)
Imagine a warm summer evening in Rome. Then imagine stretching out on a cool, grass lawn underneath giant Jurassic tulips the size of a cherry tree. Their glow softly illuminates conversations over cocktails. Add a backdrop of the serpentine jewel of Zaha Hadid’s MAXXI museum, and you have theater.
Rome is all about theater.
Pictorial> Steven Holl′s New Oceanic Museum in Biarritz
(Photo: Iwan Baan)
Steven Holl’s new Cité de l’Océan et du Surf in Biarritz, France is at once rugged and ethereal. Designed in collaboration with the Brazilian artist Solange Fabiao, the building includes an accessible concave plaza roof covered in cobblestones, pierced by two milky “glass boulders,” or pavilions housing a restaurant and a “surfer’s kiosk.” The boulders offer views out to the ocean, while the plaza directs the eye to the sky above. The museum “explores both surf and sea and their role upon leisure, science, and ecology,” according to a statement from the firm.
The landscape beyond is scooped out to reflect the building’s concave form and create a new gathering place for the city. The museum opens to the public on June 25.
Pictorial> Soumaya Museum by Fernando Romero
Soumaya Museum (Courtsey Adam Wiseman)
Mexico City’s new Museo Soumaya (named after the deceased wife of Carlos Slim, the Mexican billionaire who owns the museum) was finally unveiled to the public late last month. The museum houses 60,000-square-feet of continuous exhibition space spread over six levels and containing over 6,200 pieces from Slim’s art collection.
Designed by Fernando Romero of the firm FREE, the building is shaped like a woman’s bustier with a cinched waist. The amorphous structure is built with 28 curved steel columns of varying diameters, each with its own contoured geometry. While the exterior mass resembles a singular object, the skin is comprised of thousands of hexagonal aluminum modules.
While the building itself is almost opaque–it has no windows–the roof of the top floor is suspended from a cantilever, letting in natural light. The result is a monumental parametric design offering a dramatic sculptural addition to the city once celebrated for its tradition and hand-painted, colorful architecture.
Video> wHY Architecture Reveals Speed Art Museum Design for Louisville (Updated)
The new Speed design features dramatic cantilevered volumes facing a public plaza. (Courtesy wHY Architecture)
Louisville’s Speed Art Museum has unveiled plans for a new addition designed by Culver City, CA-based wHY Architecture with Reed Hilderbrand landscape architects. Located on the campus of the University of Louisville, the museum hopes to increase connections with the city and the university along with increasing gallery and educational space. The scope of wHY’s work includes 200,000 square feet of new and renovated space in three phases valued at $79 million. The first phase including the new north structure will begin construction this year.
A fly-through (after the jump) offers a peak at the design, which calls for a simple monumental form next to the 1920s-era Beaux-Arts main building that cantilevers over a stand of trees forming an outdoor room and cafe on the campus facing side. A large garage-like door opens out to the garden. The street facing side features an outdoor amphitheatre-like seating set in the ground and a large reflecting pool. A cantilever staircase will be visible through the street facing facade.
Unveiled> BIG Wins Again in Greenland
(Courtesy BIG)
Bjarke Ingels continues his relentless forward march toward world domination, winning yet another project, this time a gallery in Nuuk, Greenland. With so many recent mountains, it appears BIG has moved on to new iconographies inspired by land art, a barnacle perhaps?
The New Whitney Museum Takes Flight
Whitney Museum rendering (Courtesy Renzo Piano Building Workshop in collaboration with Cooper, Robertson & Partners)
The Whitney Museum, set on an outpost far from Manhattan’s posh Upper East Side and in the midst of the hip yet historic Meatpacking District, is forging ahead with its grand plans to make a bold architectural statement with a new building by Renzo Piano, which will sit adjacent to Gansevoort Market Historic District and the post-industrial High Line park.
First they must get their approvals, including the non-governmental, but not unimportant, local community board, which is “charged with representing community interest on crucial issues of development and planning, land use, zoning and City service delivery.”
Yesterday officials from the Whitney presented the large, probably not shiny new museum design to the Arts & Institutions Committee of Community Board 2 with a zippy video that flies viewers through the iceberg-like structure. The big change from earlier manifestations seems to be the addition Breuer-like fenestration facing the High Line.
Snohetta Heads South of the Border
image courtesy of Snøhetta
The Oslo- and New York-based firm Snøhetta has been chosen to design the new Museum of Environmental Sciences at the University of Guadalajara. They were selected from a short list including Shigeru Ban, DS+R, Smiljan Radic, and Mauricio Rocha.
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Broad Damaging Public Process
Leave it to Eli Broad, who is putting up his own museum in Downtown LA, to make a mockery of the public process. Despite getting a great deal on one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in the city he still hasn’t shared any of the designs for the new museum. His only nod was inviting the LA Times Christopher Hawhthorne to see the contending models a few weeks ago, and not letting any other members of the press in. Hawthorne, it appears, could not publish his thoughts until after a winner was chosen, and even then his article didn’t show any photos. And the Broad Foundation doesn’t plan to share any images of the winning scheme until after ground is broken. This is a disaster for LA, which will effectively have no say over one of the most important cultural institutions in its history.
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