Museum: The Latest Architecture and News

After inaugurating his first building in China – “The Building on the Water” – Álvaro Siza has just announced his second project in the country, again in collaboration with Portuguese architect Carlos Castanheira. This time the two architects will develop a museum for Hangzhou Art Academy.

The new museum - which will have approximately 15,000 sqm, a total area similar to that of Serralves Foundation building – will host an important collection of pieces from the famous German school of arts and design, Bauhaus, founded by Walter Gropius in 1919.

Although it went largely unnoticed until Wang Shu was awarded the Pritzker Prize, China's going through a major cultural boom. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal notes that, since 2012, hundreds of (often privately established) cultural institutions have popped up across the country, honouring everything from the famous Terracotta Soldiers to the local city planning department. We've rounded up a couple of these projects for your pleasure: Jean Nouvel's winning design for the National Art Museum, Steven Holl's mind-warping Sifang Museum, the seemingly extra-terrestrial Ordos City + Art Museum by MAD Architects, Trace Architecture Office's small museum of handcraft paper in the countryside, and a regional museum by Rocco Design Architects that takes inspiration from traditional Chinese lacquered boxes. Enjoy!

Last year the University of California, Davis invited three architectsto compete for the chance to design their new $30 million art museum, slated to open in 2016. The competition was a design-build affair, with each entrant being asked to pair up with a contractor and submit a holistic design. For those who missed it, SO - IL were announced yesterday as the winners of the competition.

Here we present one of two runner-up submissions, this one from WORKac. The concept revolves around creating a distinctive beacon, which would be a centerpoint for an overlap between art, higher-education, and everyday-life. The parallelogram form is intended to create a dynamic space which creates opportunities for interplay with the proposed landscape and surrounding area. Inside a collection of formal and informal, open and intimate are arranged along two axes, pinned together with a bright common space.

Read the architects description after the break...

The Puente de Vida Museum, more commonly referred to as The Biomuseo, will be Frank Gehry's first design in all of Latin America. It is located in Panama in the area called Amador, which sits only a few blocks from the country's principal cruise port and is adjacent to Panama City. The mission of the Biomuseo is to "offer an impressing and educational experience about the biodiversity and emergence of the isthmus in Panama in order to motivate all Panamanians to get to know and to value this natural component of their identity, as well as to generate in all its visitors the need to protect the environment" (Biomuseo Website). The Biomuseo intends to explore the importance of Panama's biological systems and its emergence as a geological link between North and South America, both of which have had global impacts many are unaware of.

With these goals in mind, it quickly became clear that the museum design needed to be something very special to attract the international attention its founders desired. They wanted the museum to be a never-before-seen kind of design and to serve as a new architectural icon for Panama, much like the Eiffel Tower does for France or the Tower of Pisa for Italy. With the participation of Gehry Partners as well as the world-renowned landscape architect Edwina von Gal & Company, the Biomuseo began to take form: an extremely unique, Gehry-esque structure surrounded by an open botanical park that complements the exhibits within.

More after the break...

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The WKCDA (West Kowloon Cultural District Authority) has made two big announcements today: (1) the winners of the competition to design the Xiqu Center, what will be the District's first landmark building; and (2) the shortlist of six architects who will compete to design the M+ Museum for Visual Culture. The Museum and Center are part of a Masterplan, designed by Foster + Partners, to transform Hong Kong's West Kowloon Cultural District into a world-class destination for arts and culture.

Hong-Kong born architects Bing Thom and Ronald Lu (of Bing Thom Architects and Ronald Lu & Partners) beat out the Master-planners themselves, Foster + Partners, to design the Xiqu Center, the "gateway of access" to the district, scheduled for commissioning in 2016.

The designer for the M+ Museum has yet to be determined, however, and, judging by the 6 world-famous architectural firms shortlisted, the competition is sure to be fierce.

Find out the complete list of architects, including Herzog & de Meuron and SNOHETTA, who will compete to design the M+ Museum, after the break...