When the winners of the prestigious Aga Khan Award for Architecture are announced every three years, the architecture celebrated is arguably the best, most important work found around the world. While the 2022 cycle announcements are imminent, looking back at the six project laureates from 2019 proves to be a fruitful review.
Following an international competition, the Montreal Holocaust Museum (MHM) has selected architecture offices KPMB Architects and Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker Architecture to design the new downtown museum building. Located on Blvd. St-Laurent, the museum is scheduled for opening in 2025. The MHM chose to move from its current location in response to the growing demand for its educational programs, which tackle important subjects such as the Holocaust, genocide, and human rights. The new building will contain multiple exhibition spaces, classrooms, an auditorium, a memorial garden, and a dedicated survivor testimony room.
The newly transformed Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts in Little Rock, US, is ready to open to the public on April 22, 2023. Designed by architecture practice Studio Gang in collaboration with Polk Stanley Wilcox and landscape architecture and urban design practice SCAPE, The Museum’s new architectural identity aims to signify its role as a leading arts institution in the region. One of the Museum’s most recognizable features, the folded plate concrete roof, is now complete. The new roofline spans the length of the building, connecting the new construction and the renovated spaces to create a coherent architectural character for the cultural institution.
Herzog & de Meuron and landscape designer Piet Oudolf are collaborating to create Calder Gardens, which will house and display artworks by American sculptor Alexander Calder. Located between Vine Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, the 6,500 square meter site will house a two-story building, half of which is developed underground. Instead of developing the site as a typical museum, the team decided to transform it into a garden as an attractive alternative for the people of Philadelphia.
In honor of Virgil Abloh's prolific legacy in the fields of architecture and design, the Brooklyn Museum has put together "Figures of Speech", an exhibition that offers visitors an unprecedented look into the artist’s work of over nearly two decades. Running from July 1st, 2022 until January 29th, 2023, the artist's prototypes are presented alongside finished works of art, products, and fashion designs, along with his myriad inspiration, from centuries-old paintings to contemporary signage at construction sites.
The Portland Museum of Art, along with architects from Dovetail Design Strategists have announced four renowned architecture firms shortlisted for the unification and expansion of Portland Museum of Art’s new campus in the heart of Downtown Portland, Maine. Under the theme of "Art for All", PMA’s mission, vision, and commitment to Sustainability and Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusivity were the basis of the value proposition guiding the museum unification and expansion, with a goal to "reflect a challenge to museums and cultural institutions to do more to create centers of belonging and foster social change".
Fortunately, architecture has the power to solve numerous issues of the modern world and how we live in it, and there are infinite ways of doing so. However, not all architecture is effective in providing solutions while also being sensitive and thought-provoking. With a portfolio that is getting richer every year, SO–IL, an architecture practice based in New York City, has proven that buildings can actually do this and much more.
Ennead Architects and Kahler Slater have unveiled the design of a new 200,000 square-foot museum building in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Set on a 2.4 acre site in the Haymarket neighborhood, the design is based on four core principles: community, nature, education, and the preservation of the museum’s vast collections. The project is expected to break ground in late 2023 and open to the public in 2026.
Following five years of construction, Portuguese architecture firm Aires Mateus has completed its awaited mudac: museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts in Lausanne, Switzerland. The sculptural building is part of a new cultural district and urban regeneration plan promoted by the Canton of Vaud, the City of Lausanne, and the CFF (Swiss Federal Railways), which features three art museums that translate the memory of the site, echoing its former industrial status with prismatic geometric forms, concrete surfaces, and sharp lines.
During his latest esplanade in Switzerland, architectural photographer Paul Clemence captured the newly inaugurated museum, highlighting its unique concrete geometry, play of shadow and light, and how the architecture complements its surroundings.
This article was originally published on Common Edge.
Despite its dazzling collection of masterpieces, London’s National Gallery has been cursed with a series of ill-advised architectural schemes over its two-century existence. Only once have its leaders made a truly inspired and visionary choice: in the mid-1980s, the gallery held a competition, won by Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown (VRSB) of Philadelphia, to build a special collections building.
The addition was constructed from 1988 to 1991, using funds donated by the Sainsbury family as a gift to the nation and was immediately hailed as one of the finest buildings of its type erected in the 20th century. It has remained popular with Londoners and has served well as an expansion of William Wilkins’s undistinguished classical building ever since. Experts on the work of Robert Venturi, John Rauch, and Denise Scott Brown consider it one of their masterpieces. Apparently, the National Gallery has a different opinion.
In Mexico, until recently, unknown to many, an architectural project has been slowly revealing itself to society. The Environmental Sciences Museum (MCA for its Spanish acronym) of the University of Guadalajara in the state of Jalisco is one of the most ambitious architectural projects in Western Mexico. Not only because of its unusual architecture but also because of how it seeks to communicate the mission of a natural history museum, one that can hardly be called traditional.
The jury's verdict for the competition for the new Museum of Fine Arts in the city of Vannes, Brittany, France, was recently revealed, and the winner of the first prize was the renowned Nieto Sobejano studio (based in Madrid and Berlin), with French architect Richard Faure as associate.
Steven Holl Architects, in collaboration with Marcela Steinbachová and SKUPINA Studio, have won first place in the international competition of the Terezín Ghetto Museum in Czech Republic. Founded in 1780 as a military fortress, Terezín served as a Jewish Ghetto during World War II where an estimated 33,000 people died. The existing Terezín Ghetto Museum honors individuals who have lost their lives with a new design that is set to serve as a memorial of hope and light.
Housing objects of artistic, cultural, historical and scientific importance, the term ‘museum’ is derived from the Latin language. In regards to classical antiquity, in Ancient Greek ‘mouseion’, meaning ‘set of muses’ was a philosophical institution, a place for contemplation and thought. These muses refer to the 9 muses in Greek mythology, the goddesses of the arts and sciences, and patrons of knowledge. Early museums’ origins stem from private collections of wealthy families, individuals or institutions, displayed in ‘cabinets of curiosities’ and often temples and places of worship. Yet these ‘collections’ are predecessors of the modern museum, they did not seek to rationally categorize and exhibit their collections like the exhibitions we see today.
In definition, the modern museum is either a building or institution that cares for or displays a collection of numerous artifacts of cultural, historical, scientific or artistic importance. Through both permanent and temporary exhibits, most public museums make these artifacts available for viewing and often seek to conserve and document their collection, to serve both research and the general public. In essence, museums house collections of significance, whether these be on a small or large scale.
The new arts campus, designed by global architecture and design firm Morphosis, has broken ground in Dallas, Texas. This marks the beginning of the first phase of construction for Edith and Peter O’Donnell Jr. Athenæum, a twelve-acre expansion of the University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas). The Athenæum complex will feature three main buildings: the Crow Museum of Asian Art (Phase I), a performance hall (Phase II), and a museum for the traditional arts of the Americas (Phase III). Phase I of the plan, the Crow Museum of Asian Art, is expected to be completed in 2024. The whole project is catalyzed by a $32 million donation from the O’Donnell Foundation.
This new cultural district, located at the southeastern edge of the UT Dallas campus, aims to become an arts destination for students, faculty, and the community. It also represents the latest milestone in a period of significant growth of the arts at UT Dallas, a school that had historically focused on science, engineering, technology, and business.
The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Le Korsa has announced that Niger-born architect Mariam Issoufou Kamara, founder of award-winning practice atelier masōmī, has been selected to design Bët-bi, a new museum and center for culture and community in southwestern Senegal. Located near a series of megaliths in the vicinity of the historic city of Kaolack, Bët-bi is set to be a state-of-the-art museum that sits at the forefront of West Africa’s flourishing arts scene and wider cultural renaissance.
This week’s curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture highlights educational and cultural projects submitted by the ArchDaily community. Through examples from all around the world, the article explores how these spaces of knowledge and discovery are designed to inspire and inform.
Featuring a monolithic museum in Portugal, a digital heritage centre with a media facade in Korea and a mobility research centre in Turkey, the round-up spans various kinds of educational and cultural spaces, as well as different attitudes towards the built or natural environment. The following projects reveal the ideas that shape spaces of knowledge in different contexts, illustrating diverse approaches toward what constitutes an institution of culture.
The Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Florida (HMREC) and architecture firm Beyer Blinder Belle have unveiled the design of Orlando's new Holocaust Museum for Hope & Humanity. The 43,000-square-foot lakefront structure will be the world’s first Holocaust museum designed around survivor and witness testimonies, serving as a distinctive destination for the region and a global point of attraction.
.jpg?1652479150 "The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum / New York . Image © Laurian Ghinitoiu")
