Museums and Libraries: The Latest Architecture and News

Opening in 2012, the $118 million steel, glass, and copper-clad expansion to Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum by Renzo Piano Building Workshop will more than double the size of the current facility. Included in the project are a new entrance, music hall, gallery space, and other amenities for an institution that has remained largely unaltered since opening in 1903.

The Internet is now the library of the past. Where the public library has historically served as the primary source of information gathering and dissemination, we now look to this new virtual, infinitely large library that can be accessed anywhere at any time as the Library of the present.

As a result, the primary roles of today’s physical libraries have shifted. Libraries of the past focused primarily on individualized information consumption. Communal aspects of interaction and information dissemination now represent the core mission of the library when information is more easily accessible. The silent grand beaux-arts reading rooms of New York or Boston have of the past been transformed into flexible communal “living rooms” in Seattle.

Dellekamp Arquitectos + Periférica shared with us their proposal for the Gosta Museum Extension competition. The project aims to preserve the historical value and prominence of the original building by smoothly integrating it to the new museum. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Many great museums for our 8th selection, including an AD Classic, and even a Tree Museum! Check them all after the break.

New Acropolis Museum / Bernard Tschumi Architects Located in the historic of Makryianni district, the Museum stands less than 1,000 feet southeast of the Parthenon. The top-floor Parthenon Gallery offers a 360-degree panoramic view of the Acropolis and modern Athens. The Museum is entered from the Dionysios Areopagitou pedestrian street, which links it to the Acropolis and other key archeological sites in Athens (read more…)

Recently opened, SOM designed, Lotte Department Store Gwangbok branch in Busan, Korea requested Yamasaki Ku Hong Associates Design Lab (YKH) to modify the existing ‘roof garden’ to allow and amplify users to enjoy the spectacular view of Busan Port. Additionally, the client requested us to find a way to increase ‘brand identity’ and ‘sales volume’. Existing conditions of roof garden with two separate observatories were not efficiently designed and more importantly were not connected; there were a possibility to increase two floors of additional retail area. YKH have come up with a new idea called, ‘Way-Pod’; Way Pod is derived from I-Pod, creating a hardware that could evolve with time. Way-Pod is comprised of ‘Way’ – free of charge, elevated view corridor – and ‘Pod’ – with charge, entertainment hardware for fun, culture and event.

The task of the competition for the Serlachius Museum Gösta was to design an extension containing five times the area of the existing museum. The current museum is a solitaire exposed on the top of a hill at a lake in a dramatic landscape. magma architecture proposes to preserve the beauty of the natural surroundings and integrate them into the visitor experience of the museum.