Museum
The Contemporary Museum _ Silvio Carta + Marta Gonzàlez
− Gran Museo del Mundo Maya _ Grupo Arquidecture
− Triana Ceramic Museum _ AF6 Arquitectos
− The New Rijksmuseum _ Cruz y Ortiz Arquitectos
− Perot Museum Of Nature and Science _ Morphosis Architects
− Museum of Memory and Tolerance _ Arditti + RDT Architects
− The Louvre Lens _ SANAA
− Parrish Museum _ Herzog & de Meuron
− Mizuta Museum of Art _ Studio Sumo
− Xinjin Zhi Museum _ Kengo Kuma & Associates
− Machado de Castro National Museum _ Gonçalo Byrne Arquitectos
UnSangDong Architects
Social Imagination _ YoonGyoo Jang
Transformation of Compound Body to Social Imaginative Body _ YoungBum Reigh
− CheongShim Water Culture Center _ Water Circle
− SeongDong Cultural & Welfare Center
− Rooftecture _ Energy + Green Home
− 2012 YeoSu EXPO Hyundai Motor Group Pavilion
C3 no.346 (2013 #6/12)
Museum
The Contemporary Museum _ Silvio Carta + Marta Gonzàlez
Recent studies of spatial behavior (Bill Hillier et al.) have demonstrated that people’s behavior in contemporary museums is significantly more affected by the physical forms of the building than by what it exhibits. This definitive finding contributes to establishing a clear position in the longstanding debate concerning cultural buildings—container or contained?—and hence concerning what a contemporary museum should be, or how its internal hierarchies should be arranged. This discussion has a long history: In the last few decades we have witnessed significant changes in the notion of the museum as a public building and its role for the city and—more broadly—for culture and society. Examples stretch from noble containers in which the main attraction and the source of its distinctive character are the exhibits the museum houses (think of the Sir John Soane House in London) to projects that are so powerfully evocative and breathtaking as to attract all the attention per se (e.g. Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao) until the museums themselves become the main piece on exhibit. Over time, architects and their commissioners have challenged traditional conceptions of the museum, and with them, standard assumptions as to its possible place in the city and its role in society. In the recent history of architecture, a few museums (e.g. the Guggenheim in New York and its spiral exhibition space, or Lina Bo Bardi’s São Paulo Museum of Art and the extraordinary public space it produces) have epitomized a clear position in the debate concerning what the contemporary museum should be and represent. Still, the question remains: what should a contemporary museum look like today? How do museums translate contemporary society’s demands for culture, entrainment and knowledge into strategies and physical forms? How should museums engage the city and its inhabitants? What user experiences should museums offer in the information age? Moreover, should the museum be for everybody, or for a small niche of experts? Such questions shed light on the broad sweep of the societal role that we may expect today’s museum to play. The projects presented in this issue offer a variety of approaches and solutions for the future of our cities which can help—if not to definitively answer—at least to frame such questions.
C3 no.346 (2013 #6/12)
Museum
The Contemporary Museum _ Silvio Carta + Marta Gonzàlez
Recent studies of spatial behavior (Bill Hillier et al.) have demonstrated that people’s behavior in contemporary museums is significantly more affected by the physical forms of the building than by what it exhibits. This definitive finding contributes to establishing a clear position in the longstanding debate concerning cultural buildings—container or contained?—and hence concerning what a contemporary museum should be, or how its internal hierarchies should be arranged. This discussion has a long history: In the last few decades we have witnessed significant changes in the notion of the museum as a public building and its role for the city and—more broadly—for culture and society. Examples stretch from noble containers in which the main attraction and the source of its distinctive character are the exhibits the museum houses (think of the Sir John Soane House in London) to projects that are so powerfully evocative and breathtaking as to attract all the attention per se (e.g. Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao) until the museums themselves become the main piece on exhibit. Over time, architects and their commissioners have challenged traditional conceptions of the museum, and with them, standard assumptions as to its possible place in the city and its role in society. In the recent history of architecture, a few museums (e.g. the Guggenheim in New York and its spiral exhibition space, or Lina Bo Bardi’s São Paulo Museum of Art and the extraordinary public space it produces) have epitomized a clear position in the debate concerning what the contemporary museum should be and represent. Still, the question remains: what should a contemporary museum look like today? How do museums translate contemporary society’s demands for culture, entrainment and knowledge into strategies and physical forms? How should museums engage the city and its inhabitants? What user experiences should museums offer in the information age? Moreover, should the museum be for everybody, or for a small niche of experts? Such questions shed light on the broad sweep of the societal role that we may expect today’s museum to play. The projects presented in this issue offer a variety of approaches and solutions for the future of our cities which can help—if not to definitively answer—at least to frame such questions.
