Hasta La Ideas

Architecture studio Renzo Piano Building Workshop has completed the extension to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, doubling the gallery space originally designed by American architect Louis Kahn (+ slideshow).

Renzo Piano Building Workshop designed a new building for the Kimbell Art Museum site to house the museum’s growing collection and provide educational facilities.

“The programmes and collection of Fort Worth’s Kimbell Art Museum have grown dramatically in recent years, far beyond anything envisioned by the museum in the 1970s,” said the studio.

The new structure faces the west facade of Kahn’s building and is similar in height, plan and orientation to the existing museum.

Its front facade is split into three sections to echo the internal layout. Visitors enter the glazed lobby in the central third of the building, which has large gallery spaces either side.

The roof extends past the external glass walls, supported by a colonnade of concrete columns.

Daylight coming through the gallery ceilings is controlled by layers of stretched fabric, glass and aluminium louvers between the wooden beams.

Glazed passageways lead from the lobby and south gallery into the second half of the building, buried beneath a grass-covered roof so the extension doesn’t dwarf Kahn’s building and to insulate the spaces.

Further exhibition space, an auditorium of 299 seats and classrooms are all located in this underground section.

“Views through the new building to the landscape and Kahn building beyond emphasise the key motifs of transparency and openness,” said Renzo Piano Building Workshop. “The new facility will be highly energy efficient, requiring only one fourth of the energy consumed by the Kahn building.”

Louis Kahn designed the original vaulted concrete building to house the museum in 1972. Piano worked in Kahn’s office during the 1960s and cites the late architect as his mentor.

Photography is by Nick Lehoux, unless otherwise stated.

More information from Renzo Piano Building Workshop follows:

Kimbell Art Museum

The Kimbell Art Museum’s original building was designed by Louis Kahn in 1972.

The new building by RPBW accommodates the museum’s growing exhibition and education programmes, allowing the original Kahn building to revert to the display of the museum’s permanent collection.

The programmes and collection of Fort Worth’s Kimbell Art Museum have grown dramatically in recent years, far beyond anything envisioned by the museum in the 1970s.

Addressing the severe lack of space for the museum’s exhibition and education programmes, the new building provides gallery space for temporary exhibitions, classrooms and studios for the museum’s education department, a large auditorium of 299 seats, an expanded library and underground parking.

The expansion roughly doubles the Museum’s gallery space. Furthermore, the siting of the new building, and the access into it from the parking, will correct the tendency of most visitors to enter the museum’s original building by what Kahn considered the back entrance, directing them naturally to the front entrance in the west facade.

Subtly echoing Kahn’s building in height, scale and general layout, the RPBW building has a more open, transparent character.

Light, discreet (half the footprint hidden underground), yet with its own character, setting up a dialogue between old and new. The new building consists of two connected structures.

The front section, facing the west façade of Kahn’s building across landscaped grounds, has a three-part façade, referencing the activities inside.

At its centre a lightweight, transparent, glazed section serves as the new museum entrance.

On either side, behind pale concrete walls are two gallery spaces for temporary exhibitions.

A colonnade of square concrete columns wraps around the sides of the building, supporting solid wooden beams and the overhanging eaves of the glass roof, providing shade for the glazed facades facing north and south.

In the galleries, a sophisticated roof system layers stretched fabric, the wooden beams, glass, aluminium louvers (and photovoltaic cells), to create a controlled day-lit environment.

This can be supplemented by lighting hidden behind the scrim fabric.

A glazed passageway leads into the building’s second structure.

Hidden under a turf, insulating roof are a third gallery for light-sensitive works, an auditorium and museum education facilities.

Glass, concrete, and wood are the predominant materials used in the new building, echoing those used in the original.

Views through the new building to the landscape and Kahn building beyond emphasise the key motifs of transparency and openness.

The new facility will be highly energy efficient, requiring only one fourth of the energy consumed by the Kahn building.

The post Renzo Piano completes extension to
Louis Kahn’s Kimbell Art Museum appeared first on Dezeen.

Noma Bar has dusted off his die-cutting machine for a new exhibition exploring conflict between warring nations. We visited the show ahead of Thursday’s opening to ask Bar about the concept.

When Noma Bar asked the public to donate materials for his latest solo project, he didn’t expect such an overwhelming response. The graphic artist put out a call on Facebook a few months ago, asking people from countries engaged in conflict to post items less than a centimetre thick to his home in London.

Bar hoped he would receive some letters, newspapers and stray pages from books and magazines. He did not expect money, children’s books, album covers, carpets and even underwear, some of which had to be smuggled through three countries just to reach him.

Greece/Turkey

The exhibition, which opens this week at London’s Rook & Raven gallery, combines material from two countries at war in a single, unified image. Materials have been cut using his dog-shaped die-cutting machine into shapes symbolising war and peace, such as a dove, a gun and a crouching sniper.

Countries featured include the US and Syria, Ethiopia and Eritrea, Israel and Palestine and Greece and Turkey. In Bar’s trademark style, each artwork uses positive and negative space to create a bold and playful image. But it’s also a provocative statement, comparing the visual culture of enemy states and showcasing collaboration between people who, in their own countries, would perhaps be forbidden from even conversing with each other.

US/Cuba

“The idea came from a conversation I had with someone from Iran,” says Bar. “We were having a great conversation, one that never could have happened if we were in our home countries, and it got me thinking, ‘it’s easy when you’re not there, so why not start a project getting people from these places to collaborate?’”

Bar has been overwhelmed by the support he has received and the lengths people have gone to to take part. In North Korea, for example, it is illegal to send currency abroad, so money was taken to Lebanon and then to Italy to be posted. Other packages sent from the Middle East had to be addressed to Bar’s neighbour, as post to someone with an Israeli name would likely have been intercepted.

“It was like trafficking – the trafficking of materials,” jokes Bar. “It sounds clichéd, but it really has been a global collaboration. People who sent materials knew they would be used alongside someone else’s from a warring country, so in a way, it’s also like a handshake between them,” he says.

What becomes apparent in many of Bar’s couplings – an unsettling suggestion for some, no doubt – are the similarities in visual culture between many nations at war. In one picture, an Israeli newspaper sits alongside one from Lebanon. Taken from the same page on the same day, they look at first glance like they are from the same publication.

Each of the images featured in Cut the Conflict demand a second glance, revealing another picture altogether. In a series of large laser cut artworks on one wall, a question mark also contains the shape of a chicken and an egg: not an immediately obvious connection, but a reference to the wider philosophical questions around wars and how they begin. In other images, the space under a sniper’s arm forms a heart, and a gun from one angle looks like a dove from another.

This duality is central to Bar’s work – his editorial illustrations and commissions often feature visual double entendres and hidden jokes. “I don’t think I could produce anything that doesn’t have duality,” he says. “I have been playing with it since I was eight or nine, when I would draw people with a set of teeth that looked like stairs or noses that looked like bicycles,” he says.

Military iconography is also a recurring theme – unsurprising considering Bar spent three years in the Israeli navy sleeping with an M16 under his pillow. In Cut the Conflict, however, this imagery is used with a more serious and provocative intention.

“Often I use it for comedic effect, as a cynical statement about governments or powers in control, but there is no cynicism in this project. There’s a bigger statement than making a fun or witty print and a slightly different story I guess, as this is dealing with the propaganda of war,” he adds.

Bar has been experimenting with die cutting since 2011, when he launched an exhibition at London’s Design Festival showcasing work cut from rubber, plywood and vinyl, and invited members of the public to create their own artworks using the technique. Cut the Conflict will involve less public interaction but Bar is planning to deliver talks and demonstrations.

US/Iran

Israel/Palestine

Bar has no plans to launch another exhibition of die cut works just yet, but he would like to continue exploring politics. As well as being surprised and delighted by his work, he hopes visitors to Cut the Conflict will be encouraged to think about the issues that the artworks represent. “I want people to discover the story behind each image. Yes, I hope they think they look beautiful and creative, but I hope they will discover something else, too” he adds.

Cut the Conflict opens at Rook & Raven Gallery, London W1T 1HN on November 22 until December 21. For details, see rookandraven.co.uk

Go West, young man [whose job it is to install solar panels]

As we neared graduating time at art school in Brooklyn, we students began dividing into two camps: Stayers and Leavers, with the former ready to seek their fortunes in NYC, and the latter scattering across the globe in pursuit of work. My friend Helena, a Stayer and an Art Direction major, worried about the NYC real estate market: “What if I can’t find an apartment,” she fretted, “with southern light?”

That southern exposures yield the most sunlight during the day is well-known among every architect, interiors photographer and loft-seeking artist in the Northern Hemisphere. Slightly less well-known is that northern exposures supposedly reveal truer colors. But now it’s another direction that’s coming into play concerning the sun, and that direction is west.

(more…)

The post Olafur Eliasson’s tears used
to make human cheese – redirect appeared first on Dezeen.

Final year students up and down the UK are beginning to plan their degree shows and, dear readers, they need your help. What did you learn from your own show and what do you wish today’s shows did better?

If you’re a recent graduate:

What tips would you give next year’s grads when it comes to the show?

Is it worth doing a physical publication or should they just have a website?

Should they theme the show?

If the college is based outside London, is it worth doing a London show? As part of a group show eg New Blood or standalone?

What about the work: how many projects should you show? Personal work or work for briefs such as D&AD?

How do you divide up the space fairly but in such a way that you can create an engaging show?

Anything else you learned?

The Kingston graphics show from 2013

If you’re a designer, creative and/or employer:

Do you attend degree shows?

If so, are you going with the intention of looking for someone to employ or just out of interest?

What do you want to see at degree shows?

What are your biggest frustrations with/criticisms of degree shows?

Is there any point to students doing printed catalogues or would you rather just view work online?

Any other tips?

What was the best degree show you ever went to and why?

Please give us your thoughts in the comments below and let’s help improve the degree show expereince for all