Hasta La Ideas

Barry Bergdoll, come on down! You’re the next Andrew W. Mellon Lecturer in the Fine Arts! This spring, MoMA’s chief curator of architecture and design will present a series of six lectures entitled “Out of Site in Plain View: A History of Exhibiting Architecture since 1750.” Over a series of Sunday afternoons (see full schedule below) at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Bergdoll will delve into topics such as “Architecture in Public from the Salon to the French Revolution,” “Exhibitions between Reform and Avant-Garde,” and the big finish, “Architecture and the Rise of the Event Economy,” with each lecture introducing “a new capacity for architecture itself, made possible through the culture of architectural exhibition.” Bergdoll is the 62nd scholar to deliver the Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, established in 1949 and named for the founder of the National Gallery. Past lecturers include T. J. Clark, Helen Vendler, and Kirk Varnedoe, whose lectures are available as podcasts.
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New York architecture studio WORKac has reorganised the galleries of the Blaffer Art Museum in Houston, Texas, by adding a glazed entrance pavilion in front (+ slideshow).

Located on the campus of the University of Houston, the original 1970s building was planned with its entrance through an inner courtyard and it struggled to attract visitors. Another problem was that the two main gallery spaces were split apart by a central staircase and the route to a third trailed past the museum’s administration areas.

WORKac attempted to solve both issues with one solution. The architects designed a glazed extension that would relocate all circulation to the facade, whilst also creating a glowing entrance foyer.

“[Our] design gives the museum striking presence and public connectivity through a series of imaginative and economical interventions to the building’s facade, circulation patterns and exterior spaces,” explain the architects.

The new pavilion has an asymmetric shape that frames and shelters the new entrance within a long triangular void.

A matching triangular wall thrusts out to one side of the opening, creating a signage board that appears to have swivelled into position. The architects call this the “wallumn”, as a combination of wall and column.

Glass planks give the extension a variety of transparencies, so anyone passing can catch glimpses of the activities inside.

A new cafe is inserted beyond the galleries and opens out to a courtyard at the rear, which is set to be re-landscaped as the next stage in the refurbishment.

The Blaffer Art Museum reopened in autumn 2012 with an exhibition dedicated to American sculptor Tony Feher.

WORK Architecture Company is headed up by architects Dan Wood and Amale Andraos. Past projects include the headquarters for fashion label Diane von Furstenberg Studio and a temporary urban farming project outside the PS1 Contemporary Art Centre in New York.

See more art gallery design on Dezeen, including a ridged steel art gallery in Korea and the Louvre Lens in northern France.

Photography is by Iwan Baan.

Here’s a project description from WORKac:

WORK Architecture Company’s Blaffer Art Museum Opens

WORKac’s dramatic new addition and renovation of the Blaffer Art Museum in Houston, Texas has opened to the public with a twenty-year survey dedicated to influential American sculptor Tony Feher.

Founded in 1973, the Blaffer Art Museum is a preeminent contemporary art museum without a permanent collection set in the midst of University of Houston’s enormous central campus. With high-profile exhibitions that are free and open to the public, as well as extensive educational programs, the museum has the potential to act as a gateway between the university and the city.

However, its visibility and identity were previously hampered by the fact that its entrance was hidden and accessible only through an internal courtyard. Within, its galleries were excessively impacted by circulation, including a stairway in the middle of two galleries, and another gallery only accessible by a hallway through the administrative offices.

The project represents an important shift in the approach to museum design in the post-recession age. In order to concentrate only on their core missions, the Blaffer and the University of Houston engaged WORKac to strategically rethink the building’s existing features. WORKac’s design gives the museum striking presence and public connectivity through a series of imaginative and economical interventions to the building’s facade, circulation patterns and exterior spaces.

To begin, WORKac opened the previously blank north side of the building with a new entrance pavilion. The projecting volume, clad with channel glass in a gradient of semi-transparent and translucent sections reveals a new grand staircase that reroutes all of the problematic circulation routes from the center of the building to the façade, providing street-level views of the museum’s interior activities, while also allowing for the expansion and diversification of the museum’s gallery spaces. A new entrance zone with a café becomes a commons area that connects the front pavilion with the back courtyard, allowing the public to freely move between city and campus via the museum.

Unable to afford a cantilever and reticent to simply support the projecting volume of the entry pavilion with a column, WORKac invented the “wallumn”, a triangular concrete wall that acts as a column while graphically emphasizing the new entry condition. The existing rear courtyard will soon receive its own upgrade, to provide a flexible and dynamic setting for a continuous program of music, film screenings and other art-related events. New landscaping throughout the exterior area, conceived in partnership with SCAPE Landscape Architects, gives the museum an invigorated sense of place and adds to the rhythm and scale of the pedestrian experience.

The Blaffer Art Museum is WORKac’s first commission in Texas and was completed in association with Gensler Houston as local architect, Matrix Structural Engineers, Shah Smith MEP Engineers and Wade Getz Civil Engineers.

Above: concept diagrams

Above: concept model

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by WORKac appeared first on Dezeen.

British architect David Chipperfield has completed a new gallery building at the Saint Louis Art Museum in Missouri (+ slideshow).

With walls of dark polished concrete, stone and glass, the East Building was designed as a contemporary counterpart to the Italian-inspired museum designed by Cass Gilbert for the 1904 World’s Fair.

David Chipperfield‘s design features a grand staircase that connects the old building with the extension. Visitors can choose to enter the museum through Gilbert’s original portico or though the glazed frontage of the new wing.

The polished dark concrete walls are speckled with aggregates from the Missouri River, while inside a coffered concrete ceiling runs through the building and integrates a grid of skylights that let daylight filter down onto an oak floor.

Above: photograph is c/o the Saint Louis Art Museum

Set to open on 29 June, the East Building will accommodate both permanent collections and special exhibitions, giving the museum around 30 percent more gallery space. Temporary exhibitions will no longer be held in the main building, which will now be dedicated to static exhibits.

Above: photograph is by Simon Menges

Additional spaces include a 100-seat restaurant, a 60-seat cafe and an underground parking zone.

David Chipperfield first revealed designs for the structure in 2005, but the project had been delayed by funding issues. Architecture firm HOK worked alongside Chipperfield to deliver the building.

Above: photograph is by Simon Menges

The London-based architect has worked on a number of museum projects over the years. In 2007 he won the Stirling Prize for the Museum of Modern Literature in Germany and he also designed the Hepworth Wakefield gallery in the UK. Recent projects include designs for a museum of fine arts in Reims, France. See more architecture by David Chipperfield.

Photography is by Jacob Sharp, apart from where otherwise stated.

Here’s some more information from the press release:

Expanded and Renovated Saint Louis Art Museum to Open its New East Building by Sir David Chipperfield on June 29-30, 2013

Brent R. Benjamin, director of the Saint Louis Art Museum, today announced details of the grand opening of the Museum’s more than 200,000-square-foot East Building, designed by renowned British architect Sir David Chipperfield with technical assistance from HOK. A weekend celebration, held on June 29 and 30, will welcome the public to the monumental new structure of dark polished concrete-and-stone panels and floor-to-ceiling windows, set in historic Forest Park as a contemporary counterpart to the scale and dignity of the original building, designed by Cass Gilbert for the 1904 World’s Fair.

All inaugural exhibitions in the East Building will be drawn from the collections of the Saint Louis Art Museum, revealing as never before the riches of one of America’s premier encyclopedic art museums. The expansion adds 82,452 square feet of galleries and public space – an increase of about 30 percent – while linking the Museum more closely with Forest Park through a design by the celebrated French landscape architect Michel Desvigne. The project also adds a host of new visitor amenities to the Museum, all in support of a civic institution that is always open free to the public.

“The ideal of a democratic Palace of the Arts, which Cass Gilbert so powerfully embodied in our original building, now finds beautiful, modern-day expression, at once rigorous and elegant, in the adjoining masterwork by Sir David Chipperfield,” Brent R. Benjamin stated. “Celebrating the Forest Park site, harmonizing with the 1904 building, and creating a distinctive architectural work for our own time, the East Building will offer the people of St. Louis, and our visitors from around the world, a remarkable new view of the outstanding collections of this Museum and of the vital role that an art museum can play in public life.”

Barbara B. Taylor, president of the Saint Louis Art Museum, stated, “The unprecedented success of the East Building capital campaign, which to date has secured commitments of more than $160 million, surpassing its $145 million public goal, is a testament to the importance of the Saint Louis Art Museum in the life of our city, and a statement of confidence in this Museum’s position among national institutions.”

Inaugural exhibitions to celebrate the collections

The Museum’s collections span some 5,000 years and feature masterpieces from the ancient Mediterranean, Asia, Africa, the Islamic world, Europe and the Americas. All aspects of the collections will be celebrated at the time of the opening.

In the East Building, the inaugural installation in the new special exhibitions galleries will be Postwar German Art in the Collection, an extensive re-examination of this major aspect of the Museum’s holdings. The exhibition will address themes and groupings such as the legacy of Joseph Beuys; the large-scale works of Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke and Anselm Kiefer; and the influence of the Düsseldorf School of Photography. Drawing from impressive strengths in the Museum’s collections, these galleries will feature works by artists including Georg Baselitz, Jörg Immendorff, Martin Kippenberger, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Andreas Gursky and Candida Höfer.

The East Building galleries dedicated to the permanent collection will explore developments in American art after World War II. Beginning with American responses to Surrealism and the emergence of Abstract Expressionism, the presentation will proceed to movements including Minimalism, Pop and Process art. Galleries also will address themes such as the return to figuration and contemporary modes of abstraction. Artists represented in the installation will include earlier figures such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Frank Stella,Ellsworth Kelly and Andy Warhol and more recent artists such as Leonardo Drew, Teresita Fernández, Kerry James Marshall and Julie Mehretu. Thirty percent of the works in the installation will not have been on view for approximately a decade.

The Museum’s former temporary exhibition galleries in the 1904 building will now be devoted to the permanent collection, and more than 50 galleries in the Cass Gilbert-designed Main Building recently have been reinstalled as part of a renovation project complementing the East Building expansion. Notable reinstallations in the original building include the galleries for 18th century European art, with works by Canaletto, Tiepolo, Chardin, Reynolds and Gainsborough presented within the context of the Grand Tour; the French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist galleries, with works by masters from Manet, Monet and Renoir through van Gogh and Gauguin installed thematically; and a dedicated gallery to house the Museum’s collection of the work of Max Beckmann, the largest of its kind in the world.

Among the major reinstallations to be revealed at the time of the grand opening will be A New View: Surrealism, Abstraction and the Modern City. Exploring three great themes in the art of the first half of the 20th century, the installation will examine Surrealism as reflected in the work of Giorgio di Chirico and Max Ernst and the abstract approaches evident in works by Paul Klee, Roberto Matta, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró and Alberto Giacometti. A second section of the installation will focus on the pivotal role of Piet Mondrian in European abstraction. The third section will explore the importance of urban imagery in the work of artists including Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Amedeo Modigliani and Robert Delaunay.

Another major reinstallation in the 1904 building will be A New View: Ancient American Art, presenting some 300 works from the ancient cultures of the WesternHemisphere. Constituting the first reconfiguration since 1981 of the Museum’s esteemed collection of ancient American art, the installation will include works from the Inca and Moche of South America, the Maya and Aztec of Mexico and the Mississippian cultures of the Midwest.

The opening of the East Building will also mark the inauguration of Stone Sea, a major new outdoor work commissioned by the Museum from the celebrated British sculptor Andy Goldsworthy. Using stone from the Earthworks Quarry in Perryville, Mo., Goldsworthy has built 25 10-foot arches, each weighing approximately 13 tons, arranged in a dense composition that evokes the texture and movement of theancient shallow seas that once covered the Midwest.

Highlights of the East Building design

Visitors to the Saint Louis Art Museum may use the existing Sculpture Hall entrance in the 1904 building, where Cass Gilbert’s original main-floor layout has been restored as part of the expansion project, or may use the fully accessible new entrance to the East Building. Either way, the contrast is immediately apparent between the neo-classical 1904 building and the East Building, with its facade of floor-to-ceiling windows and twenty-three monumental panels of dark polished concrete gleaming with highlights of Missouri river aggregates.

David Chipperfield’s design joins the two buildings seamlessly with a new Grand Stair, which also establishes clear and organic connections among primary circulation axes. The new circulation path leads directly from the Grand Stair to lower-level galleries and a concourse with a new 60-seat cafe, a renovated museum shop and auditorium, and access to a new below-grade parking garage.

The outstanding design feature of the galleries of the East Building is an innovative coffered ceiling made of white concrete. The ceiling houses 698 coffers, most with scrimmed skylights to provide abundant but controlled natural light to the galleries. The lighting system is designed in collaboration with Arup.

Floors in the East Building are made of six-inch-wide planks of white oak, and the floor vents are stainless steel, both chosen to minimize distraction from the works of art.

The landscape design by Michel Desvigne features the installation of outdoor sculptures by artists including Alexander Calder, Henry Moore and George Rickey; as well as new plantings – including approximately 300 trees – in accordance with St. Louis’s existing Forest Park Master Plan. The landscape design will be executed in phases, with much of the most significant work to be completed after the June 2013 opening.

New visitor amenities

The outstanding new amenity in the East Building will be a new 2,500-square-foot restaurant, offering seating for 100 patrons with dramatic views overlooking Forest Park’s Art Hill. A private dining room in the restaurant will accommodate as many as 40 guests. Operating the restaurant and the new Museum cafe will be the Bon Appétit Management Company, which is known for its restaurant service at institutions including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Seattle Art Museum and the Getty Center.

Among the other significant amenities offered as part of the expansion project are a renovated museum shop, a renovation and upgrade of the 480-seat auditorium, the provision of three new classrooms, a dedicated art-study space and a school-group entrance in the existing buildings and the development of a new 129,000-square-foot below-grade parking garage in the East Building, accommodating 300 vehicles.

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by David Chipperfield appeared first on Dezeen.

London firm Threefold Architects designed this long gabled artists’ studio in Norfolk, UK, so that the owners could construct it themselves (+ slideshow).

Bold southern light floods the studio through large sliding glass doors, opening out onto the artists’ garden, whilst colder northern light diffuses through a clerestory window on the northern elevation.

This continuous linear window emphasises the boundary between land and sky, framing seasonally transforming fields against morphing clouds.

As a reference to the local agricultural vernacular, Threefold Architects chose corrugated black cellulose sheeting to clad two of the exterior walls and the roof whilst sustainably-sourced timber protects the gable ends.

The Long Studio’s “simple and honest” materials and form allow light and colour from the surrounding fields and garden to animate the dark exterior and bright interior.

The simplicity of The Long Studio’s construction system allowed the artists to build their studio almost entirely by themselves, so the budget could remain modest and the practically-minded artists could directly influence their creative environment.

Another benefit of using such a simple frame is the light, spacious internal volume it provides. This unexpected height contrasts with the exterior linearity of the project.

Shortlisted for AJ’s Small Projects sustainability award, this self-build is operationally carbon neutral. The Long Studio achieves its zero carbon status with such features as sheep’s wool insulation, a rainwater harvesting system and photovoltaic cells located on the garden-facing roof which annually feed over 1000KWh back into the National Grid.

We recently featured the winner of the AJ Small Projects Awards 2013, Laura Dewe Mathews’ Gingerbread House.

Apprentice Store is another project by Threefold Architects that retains exposed wooden beams and trusses.

Photography is by Charles Hosea.

Above: axonometric diagram 

Above: short section

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Threefold Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

Columns branch outwards like a grove of trees around the aisle of this wedding chapel in Gunma, Japan, by Tokyo architect Hironaka Ogawa (+ slideshow).

The Forest Chapel sits in the garden of an existing wedding centre and Hironaka Ogawa wanted to make a direct reference to the surroundings. “I took the trees in the garden as a design motif and proposed a chapel with randomly placed, tree-shaped columns,” he explains.

The sprawling steel columns are dotted randomly around the interior, creating irregular arches for the bride to walk beneath. “I intended to create various looks by rotating the columns and placing them throughout the space,” adds Ogawa.

Each steel column comprises eight components, which are fixed together in a cross formation.

A length of glazing skirts the outer walls, letting natural light filter in at ankle level. Two tall windows also puncture an angled wall at the back of the building, directing sunlight around the altar.

Wooden pews provide traditional rows of seating for guests.

The Forest Chapel was completed in 2011 and was one of the nominees in the civic and community category at the World Architecture Festival last summer.

Other wedding chapels we’ve featured include a cylindrical registry office in China and a shimmering golden chapel in England.

Photography is by Daici Ano.

Here’s a statement from Hironaka Ogawa:

This is a new chapel built in the garden of an existing wedding facility which is surrounded by trees. The building looks like a simple white box floating in the air to be in harmony with the existing facility. On the other hand, I took the trees in the garden as a design motif and proposed a chapel with randomly placed, tree-shaped columns using angle irons.

In detail, I gathered eight angle irons composed of four 90 x 90 x 7mm L-angle irons and four 75 x 75 x 6mm L-angle irons to create a cross-shaped column. I intended to create a column that branches out up above depicting gentle curves of a tree. I applied two different curves for both size L-angle irons and created two types of tree-shape columns.

I intended to create various looks by rotating the columns and placing them throughout the space. The tree-shaped columns serve as decorations as well as important structural elements that receive the building’s vertical load and wind pressure.

Each tree-shaped column is placed a decent distance from each other by their branched out, angled irons. It is also rational for the building structure.

The forest in nature also consists of trees that keep certain distances from each other under different conditions. The distances and shapes of the columns’ branches made by rigid angle irons creating the silence and tension that is appropriate for a place like a wedding chapel where people make their vows.

Above: site plan

Above: floor plan – click for larger image

Above: section – click for larger image

Above: east and west elevations – click for larger image

Above: north elevation – click for larger image

Above: south elevation – click for larger image

Above: column detail

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Hironaka Ogawa appeared first on Dezeen.