Museums: The Latest Architecture and News

London-based firm Nex—Architecture has unveiled its plans for a new Royal Air Force (RAF) Museum as a part of the RAF’s 2018 Centenary Program. The new project will revitalize an existing RAF museum in North London that was created in 1972, transforming it into a visitor facility and promoting the airfield heritage of the museum’s location.

The new scheme will put emphasis on improving visitor experience by “establishing a clear route through the exhibition spaces.” A prominent new 40-meter-long entrance and visitor center will be placed inside the Hangar 1 building, acting as a welcome and orientation point.

+ 9

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD) first opened in 1941 in the oceanfront La Jolla home of philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps. In the half century that followed, the museum saw three distinct expansions; now, as it turns 75, MCASD anticipates its latest addition, a flexible new multipurpose design by Selldorf Architects that will quadruple the current gallery space.

+ 2

Museums are increasingly becoming key landmarks that help define the image of a city, housing part of its memory and culture. In recent decades they have gained even more importance thanks to their architectural designs. Briktop was inspired by iconic designs to create this video that features works that stand out in architectural history and are important references for all architects.

See the video and the list of works below.

This article originally appeared on guggenheim.org/blogs under the title "Nine Guggenheim Exhibitions Designed by Architects," and is used with permission.

Exhibition design is never straightforward, but that is especially true within the highly unconventional architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum. Hanging a painting in a traditional “box” gallery can be literally straightforward, whereas every exhibition at the Guggenheim is the reinvention of one of the world’s most distinctive and iconic buildings. The building mandates site-specific exhibition design—partition walls, pedestals, vitrines, and benches are custom-fabricated for every show. At the same time, these qualities of the building present an opportunity for truly memorable, unique installations. Design happens simultaneously on a micro and macro scale—creating display solutions for individual works of art while producing an overall context and flow that engages the curatorial vision for the exhibition. This is why the museum’s stellar in-house exhibition designers all have an architecture background. They have developed intimate relationships with every angle and curve of the quarter-mile ramp and sloping walls.

Videos

The winners of the 2016 Leading Culture Destinations Awards have been announced. Presented this past weekend at a ceremony in London, the LCD Awards are given annually to recognize the success of “museums, art organizations, and cultural destinations from around the world [that] are investing in iconic architecture, cross-sector collaborations, [and] audacious programming […] to diversify the experiences offered to visitors and establish their global reputations.”

This year, awards were presented in four categories: Leading Cultural Destination of the Year; Best New Museum of the Year (for museums opened in the past 15 months); Best Soft Power Destination of the Year (a new award for 2016, given to destination who exhibit 'excellence, relevance, transparency, accountability and sustainability'); and the Traveller’s Award for Best Place to Visit.

The overall winner for 2016 was Diller, Scofidio + Renfro’s Broad Museum in Los Angeles. Continue reading to see the full list of winners.

The office of Peter Zumthor has released new renderings of their design for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s $600 million new home on Museum Row in Los Angeles. The images provide the first look into the museum interior and gallery spaces, and present the museum in its nearly-finalized design. From this point, Zumthor has stated, "it is only going to be small alterations."

+ 6

A few months ago, the Art Museum of Lima (MALI) announced an international call for a competition to design a new contemporary art wing via an underground expansion. After receiving 387 proposals from 56 countries, the jury has selected the architects Burgos & Garrido Arquitectos and LLAMA Urban Design as the winners of the competition, beating out entries from other top architects including Zaha Hadid Architects and Alberto Campo Baeza.

The new addition will include new exhibition halls, a library, classrooms, a cafe/restaurant, storage space, a public square, access to a future subway station and a landscape proposal for the park surrounding the museum. See images of the winning proposal and the two finalists after the break.

+ 107

Last month another building by Álvaro Siza Vieira, the Nadir Afonso Contemporary Art Museum in Chaves, Portugal commemorated its inauguration. To celebrate its opening, Fernando Guerra, from Últimas reportagens shared with us an amazing series of photographs.

See all the photos and learn more about the museum below.

Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects (LOHA) has unveiled its plans for the renovation and master plan of the MBAD African Bead Museum, an arts and cultural complex in Detroit centered around African art.

Located on a major boulevard in a series of townhouses, the Museum is currently in a state of disrepair with the roof on its corner building having collapsed. This main corner building, although heavily damaged, still features wall murals by artist Olayami Dabls, and thus needs to be preserved.

The belief that a building can both blend in and stand out at the same time is embodied by the Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art (CAC), located in Cincinnati. Though it's heavy volumetric massing makes it appear as an independent and impenetrable sculptural element, the Rosenthal Center is in fact designed to pull the city in – past its walls and up, toward the sky. This inherent dynamism is well-suited to a gallery which does not hold a permanent collection, and is situated at the heart of a thriving Midwestern city.

+ 32

Egypt's minister of antiquities, Mamdouh al-Damaty, has announced plans to move forward with an underwater museum project in the Eastern Harbor area of Alexandria's Abu Qir Bay, according to a report by The Smithsonian Magazine. In the works since 1996, the project not only seeks to bring historic sunken artifacts and structures into public view, but also to preserve the site, which is at risk of damage from pollution, fishing boat anchors, and poaching by divers.

In 2008, French architect Jacques Rougerie learned of the project and reached out to the Egyptian Ministry to create conceptual renderings of what the space could become.

Videos

After a meticulous multi-year restoration the Musée Rodin in Paris has reopened to the public. Dedicated exclusively to the work of Auguste Rodin, the state-owned museum has undergone a ground-up facelift designed to breathe new life into the ageing home of the artist's diverse body of work. Housed in an estate originally built in 1732 and open to the public since 1919, the comprehensive renovation has left no stone unturned, including a full structural and cosmetic overhaul. Project architect Richard Duplat was challenged to "recreate the atmosphere it must have had in Rodin’s day" while implementing current accessibility and safety standards, all with the goal to better represent Rodin's influential work.

+ 10

The winners of the 2015 Leading Culture Destinations Awards have been announced at a ceremony in London. The Awards recognize the success of “museums, art organizations, and cultural destinations from around the world [that] are investing in iconic architecture, cross-sector collaborations, [and] audacious programming […] to diversify the experiences offered to visitors and establish their global reputations.”

This year’s Awards honored the Museum of Modern Art in New York City as the leading cultural destination of the year.

The winners of the 2015 Leading Culture Destinations Awards are: