Hasta La Ideas

News: the world’s largest free-standing museum dedicated to photography is set to be built in Morocco by British firm David Chipperfield Architects.

The Marrakech Museum for Photography and Visual Art (MMPVA) by David Chipperfield Architects will showcase a permanent collection of lens-based art and photography from the nineteenth century to the present and host a programme of contemporary art exhibitions.

The museum will cover an area of approximately 6,000 square metres in the west part of Marrakech, adjacent to the twelfth century Menara Gardens.

When completed the space will feature galleries, a theatre, cafe, bookshop, public spaces and educational facilities.

A large atrium will form a centrepiece to the building with a rectangular pool of water on the ground floor. Varieties of desert plants in a garden will surround the atrium on the third floor.

“With a rich program of exhibitions, education and cultural exchange the museum will be the first such institution on the African continent,” said the firm. “It will broaden the artistic experience across cultural boundaries to form greater understanding and tolerance.”

In the meantime, the Marrakech Museum for Photography and Visual Art (MMPVA) is temporarily located at El Badi Palace and its first photography exhibition opens later this month.

Other projects by David Chipperfield Architects include a gallery building at the Saint Louis Art Museum in Missouri, the Musée des Beaux-arts in Reims, France and the seafront Turner Contemporary Gallery in Margate, East Kent.

See more projects from David Chipperfield »
See more museums »
See more Moroccan architecture and design »

Here’s some information from the architects:

The Marrakech Museum for Photography and Visual Arts

The Marrakech Museum for Photography and Visual Arts will be built at the edge of the historic 12th Century Menara Gardens in Marrakech. The Gardens – historically the link between the Atlas Mountains, life-giving water and the old walled city is a fitting place to build a museum which will surely become the 21st century link between the culturally diverse people of Morocco, her visitors and the international world of art and culture.

Marrakech, located in the heart of Morocco, hosts a vast and diverse pool of some 9 million international visitors annually and is the home of both the Marrakech International Film Festival and the Marrakech Biennale. The Marrakech Museum for Photography and Visual Arts will be a cultural epicenter in the region; its location will serve as the heart of a multi-point star drawing scholars, students, and visitors from around the world.

The Marrakech Museum for Photography and Visual Arts will be housed in a 6,000+ m2 state of the art museum facility designed by renown architect Sir David Chipperfield. This will be a transformative project for the Arts in Morocco and indeed all of Africa. When completed, MMP+ will house galleries, a theatre, café, bookshop, public spaces and extensive educational facilities – all of the components that create a lively innovative museum project.

Opening in January 2013 The Marrakech Museum for Photography and Visual Arts at the Badii Palace in Marrakech will be our temporary home while the permanent museum building is constructed. MMP+ at Badii Palace will have a rich, full program of exhibitions, education, cultural exchange and outreach. Functioning as a “project” space, the Badii Palace site will be a vibrant laboratory for the development of the programs and exhibitions that will be housed in the permanent building when complete.

The Marrakech Museum for Photography and Visual Arts will focus its collecting across 3 easily definable and broadly interpretive genres of photography and lens based media both static and moving. (a) Architecture / Design (b) Photojournalism (c) Fashion / Culture. Through tightly disciplined acquisitions MMP+ will build a collection that will allow diverse use both in its exhibition program and education. We will also retain the flexibly to exhibit a broad range of works of art across all media.

The Marrakech Museum for Photography and Visual Arts will form a hub for education across many areas of museum sciences. Our goal is to take students from Morocco and the region, whose interests are in curatorial studies, connoisseurship, museum operations, development etc. and teach them both within the confines of the museum, interaction within their local communities and by sending them abroad to work at some of the worlds great institutions and universities the hands-on practice of museum science.

With a rich program of exhibitions, education and cultural exchange the Museum will be the first such institution on the African Continent and will broaden the artistic experience across cultural boundaries to form greater understanding and tolerance.

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museum for Marrakech appeared first on Dezeen.

Here are more public spaces on the back of bikes: a swarm of tiny mobile parks covered in grass are being pedalled around the city of Baku this month (+ slideshow).

Designed by John Bela of design firm Rebar Group and Till Wolfer of Scandinavian collective N55, the Parkcycle Swarm project consists of four pedal-powered miniature parks.

Each one has a bike in the centre and is surrounded by a rectangular metal frame with a grassy surface. One of the parks has a tree attached to the frame and another folds up like a sun lounger.

They can be cycled to a chosen location and installed for public use. Visitors to the micro-green spaces are encouraged to take a break, have some lunch, relax and sunbathe.

The project intends to highlight new possibilities of public installations and to raise awareness of cycling, community participation and the value of green space, according to the designers.

Parkcycle Swarm will be traveling around the Azerbaijan capital city as part of arts organisation Yarat’s Public Arts Festival called Participate this month.

Another new addition to the city of Baku is Zaha Hadid’s Heydar Aliyev Centre.

Other mobile architecture featured recently include a portable town square on a pedal bike, a tiny mobile stage that is based on sixteenth century market stalls and Roman fortune tellers and a quilted cube attached to the back of a tricycle.

See more mobile architecture »

Here’s a project description from Yarat:

Parkcycle Swarm, by Rebar Group and N55

A joint project by N55 and Rebar Group, Parkcycle Swarm has landed for August-September 2013 at PARTICIPATE: Baku Public Art Festival 2013, produced by YARAT.

The work joins YARAT’s founder comments, “Parkcycle Swarm is a brilliant addition to the Public Art Festival, helping expand our expectations of ‘public art’ and creating a social, green space wherever its components travel. We hope to inspire artists and the public alike with our programme, so we are delighted to welcome both the Parkcycle Swarm and Rebar group’s director John Bela to give a lecture at YARAT.”

Parkcycle Swarm consists of four small mobile parks, which are being cycled through the city. Described by Rebar group as a “human-powered, open space distribution system,” Parkcycle debuted in San Francisco in 2007, offering immediate access to green space for the neighbourhoods it parked in. By bringing the project to Baku, Rebar Group aims to expand the possibilities of public sculpture whilst raising awareness of cycle-power, community participation and the importance of green space.

Works at the Baku Public Art Festival 2013 range from a giant Rubber Duck by Florentijn Hofman (Netherlands), which arrives on 5 September, to Farkhad Haqverdi’s (Azerbaijan) Yard Art initiative, which has transformed Baku’s most neglected spaces, through to a performance and installation 9th Apartment by Georgian collective Group Bouillon, which questioned post-Soviet ideas of public and private space.

Parkcycle Swarm will be followed by Florentijn Hofman’s Rubber Duck, landing in Baku 5 September.

About YARAT

Founded in 2011 by Aida Mahmudova, YARAT is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to nurturing an understanding of contemporary art in Azerbaijan and to creating a platform for Azerbaijani art, both nationally and internationally.

Based in Baku, YARAT, (which means ‘create’ in Azerbaijani) realises its mission through an ongoing program of exhibitions, education events, and festivals. YARAT facilitates dialogue and exchange between local and international artistic networks, including foundations, galleries and museums. A series of residencies further fosters opportunities for global cultural dialogue and partnerships.

YARAT’s educational initiatives include lectures, seminars, master classes, and the Young Artist Project ARTIM (meaning ‘progress’ in Azerbaijani). ARTIM aims to encourage the next generation of Azerbaijani creative talent to seek a career in the arts and gives young practitioners the opportunity to exhibit their works in a professional context.

Founded as part of YARAT’s ongoing commitment to growing local art infrastructure, YAY Gallery is a commercial exhibition space. In line with this, YAY (meaning SHARE in Azerbaijani) shares all proceeds from sales between the artist and YARAT and supports a range of national and international artists.

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Rebar Group and N55 appeared first on Dezeen.

London studio Duggan Morris Architects has completed a community facility in south London that combines exposed concrete frames with raw brickwork and warm oak (+ slideshow).

Named ORTUS, the three-storey building provides an education and events centre for Maudsley, a charitable foundation that acts to promote mental healthcare and well-being, and is used to host workshops and exhibitions that involve the entire community.

Duggan Morris Architects drew inspiration from neighbouring Georgian architecture to formulate the proportions of the building’s facade.  A precast concrete framework gives each elevation a strict grid, which is then infilled with a sequence of brickwork and glass.

“The building has a simple rectilinear form, with elevations composed to compliment the Georgian principles of proportion, scale, hierarchy and materiality,” said architects Joe Morris and Mary Duggan.

The brickwork appears to fade from the base of the structure to the top, changing from a typical London stock to a lighter greyish red.

Floors inside the building are staggered to create half storeys, helping to integrate activities in different spaces. These level changes are visible on the exterior walls and all centre around a grand top-lit staircase.

A cafe located near the ground-floor entrance is intended to entice visitors into the building. The first of several events spaces is positioned on one side, separated by a wide staircase that integrates an informal seating area.

“At ground level, the landscape is envisaged as a series of connected rooms, mirroring the internal configurations thus ensuring that learning activities can spill out in a controlled manner,” said the architects.

Flexible and sub-dividable spaces fill the two storeys above, plus there’s a concealed terrace on the roof.

Other projects by Duggan Morris Architects include a brick house on the site of a former plaster-moulding workshop and a converted nineteenth century farm building.

See more architecture by Duggan Morris Architects »
See more community centres »

Photography is by Jack Hobhouse.

Read on for more information from Duggan Morris:

ORTUS, Home of Maudsley Learning

ORTUS, home of Maudsley Learning is a 1,550sqm pavilion housing learning and event facilities, cafe and exhibition spaces. The central focus of this unique project, initially coined ‘Project Learning Potential’, is to create a totally immersive learning environment generating a series of interconnecting spaces to encourage intuitive learning activities either in groups or individually and also to create possibilities for digital learning via social media.

The project was initially developed through an 18 month immersion process involving research and consultation workshops with user groups, Kings College Hospital, the Institute of Psychiatry and community groups, with Duggan Morris Architects commissioned to develop the client’s brief. This process was ultimately captured through a series of ‘Vision Statements’, which guided the wider team through the project providing a constant reference point during the design development stages.

The building is now home to Maudsley Learning, a Community Interest Company which has been set up to run the building. It’s vision is to raise knowledge and awareness of mental health and wellbeing which it intends to achieve through the building, through the development of a virtual learning environment and the creation of learning events focusing on mental health and wellbeing across a broad audience.

In response to locally evident contextual influences the building has been conceived as a free standing pavilion, regular in both plan and volume.

The building has a simple rectilinear form, with elevations composed to compliment the Georgian principles of proportion, scale, hierarchy and materiality. A 1200 mm vertical grid, of precast concrete fins, articulates the contrasting materials of brick and glass, whilst floor slabs are expressed in the same material ensuring the stagger of the floor plates is abundantly clear to even the casual passer-by. Terraces at ground, inset balconies above, and a large roof terrace further articulate the simplicity of the building, whilst creating positive connections between internal spaces and the abundant landscape which sits in and around the project.

At ground level, the landscape is envisaged as a series of connected rooms, mirroring the internal configurations thus ensuring that learning activities can spill out in a controlled manner. A cafe at the ground floor is intended as a marker near the building entrance, aiming to help de-stigmatise preconceptions of mental health and well being, by making the building more accessible to the wider community, sharing with the campus a vision which includes doctors, nurses, teachers, service users and carers in promoting an integrated learning environment; ‘Learning for anyone, anywhere, at anytime’.

Spatially, the building is planned as a series of flexible, sub-dividable spaces positioned around a central multifunctional tiered space, navigated by a grand ‘open’ staircase. In cross-section, these floor plates stagger across the section by a half storey, thus the grouping of learning spaces appears to extend from the half landing of the open stair; the aim being to create a stronger visual link between floors enhancing the ethos of an immersive learning environment. The open staircase with its shortened connections across the plan is intended to encourage a domestic scale circulation system and is set away from the lift core to encourage movement and visible activity.

The central space is key to controlling the environmental performance of the building, which is uniquely passive, by introducing abundant natural light from a glazed roof into the heart of the plan, feeding each floor plate. In turn automated glazed vents throughout the building envelope introduce cooling air as required at each level throughout day and night, feeding the central stack of the void.

The building was delivered through a PPC 2000 Partnering project, tailored for Construction Management procurement. It was delivered on time and on budget. As a highly sustainable building it is designed to BREEAM excellent standard and has an ‘A’ energy rating.

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by Duggan Morris Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

News: architecture firm Kohn Pedersen Fox has unveiled plans to surround the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles in a cloak of steel ribbons as part of major refurbishment.

Housing one of the world’s largest automotive collections, the Petersen Museum occupies a former 1960s department store on Wilshire Boulevard. In 2014, the museum will celebrate its twentieth anniversary and to tie in with this landmark it has commissioned Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) to upgrade its outdated facilities.

“The Petersen Museum is a rich cultural deposit of the most interesting and compelling automobiles in the world,” commented KPF design principal Trent Tesch. “Housed in a converted department store, the museum finds itself without a deserving image. While the ‘bones’ of the building work well for the display of cars, the expression of the structure lacks imagination.”

Set for completion in early 2015, the renovation will involve stripping back the existing concrete portico and replacing it with a red aluminium rainscreen, over which the stainless-steel ribbons will be mounted. Integrated lighting fixtures will highlight the details at night.

“Our goal was to find a way to inject life into the building, with minimal intervention that would produce the maximum effect,” said Tesch. “The design offers an abstract veil of flowing ribbons, meant to invoke not only the spirit of the automobile, but also the spirit of Los Angeles architectural culture.”

KPF co-founder and chairman A. Eugene Kohn compares the new facade to the shapes made by a dancing ballerina. “[It is] intended to express constant motion, suggesting speed, aerodynamics and the movement of air,” he added.

The architects will also overhaul the building’s interior, adding an extra 1400 square metres of exhibition space for the museum’s growing collection.

Other projects underway by KPF include an extension to a 30-storey tower in London and a skyscraper proposal for a new business district in South Korea. See more architecture by KPF »

Here’s more information from the architects:

KPF designs Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles

Firm’s exciting repositioning project on Museum Row of The Miracle Mile

International architecture firm Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) is pleased to share its exciting design for the new Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. The museum will mark its 20th anniversary in 2014 by commencing a complete exterior transformation and a dynamic redesign of the interior, resulting in a world-class museum that will showcase the art, experience, culture, and heritage of the automobile.

Opportunely located on “Museum Row” of the famed “Miracle Mile”, the building actually started out as a department store in 1962. Its new design will transform the Petersen building into one of the most significant and unforgettable structures in Los Angeles – an appropriate home for such an impressive collection of automobiles.

Unlike most museum renovations, which involve complete building teardown, this is a repositioning project. The existing building is like a chassis without a body. By keeping the bones, but removing the existing concrete portico on Wilshire, and installing a corrugated aluminium rain screen outboard of the current facade on each of the three street frontages, the museum will have a whole new look and feel. New “ribbons” made out of angel hair stainless steel on the front and top, and red painted aluminium on the back and bottom, flow over and wrap the building. Acting as beams that support their own weight, these evoke the feeling of speed and movement, sitting atop the existing structural system much like the body of a car mounts to its frame. At night, the colour and forms will be lit from within to accentuate the steel sculpture and act as a beacon on The Miracle Mile.

Los Angeles is a city that was brought to life by the automobile. The idea of Los Angeles architecture invokes thoughts of the mid-century modern movement led by Architects such as John Lautner, and Wayne McAllister. This modern and space age architecture, known as “Googie”, is characterised by upswept roofs, curvaceous shapes, and bold use of glass, steel, and neon. This style of architecture was influenced by car culture, suburban life, and the Atomic age. Because of increasing car ownership, cities no longer had to rely on a central downtown and business could therefore be interspersed with residential areas.

Work on the museum is expected to take 14 to 16 months and to be completed in early 2015.

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LA’s Petersen Automotive Museum appeared first on Dezeen.

The MuSe Museum by Italian architect Renzo Piano has opened to the public in Trento, Italy, and features angled profiles that echo the shapes of the nearby Dolomites mountains (+ slideshow).

The science and technology museum forms part of a wider regeneration by Renzo Piano Building Workshop of Trento’s Le Albere district, a riverside site that formerly housed a Michelin tyre factory. The museum is positioned at the northern boundary of the new neighbourhood, beyond housing, offices, a hotel and a new public park.

Comprising a mixture of steel and glass panels, the dynamic roofline juts up and down between three- and six-storey heights to create a rhythm with the mountains beyond, as well as to divide the building into four sections.

“The idea of the roofs was important because we are in a deep valley, and the area is really visible from above,” project architect Danilo Vespier told Disengo magazine. “You just need to drive half an hour into the mountains and you can look down on the area as if it was an architectural model.”

The two central sections accommodate exhibitions dedicated to natural history, from mountains to glaciers. These galleries centre around a full-height atrium where taxidermied animals and skeletons are suspended below a large glass ceiling.

A huge glass-fronted lobby provides an entrance to the museum, leading visitors to the top of the building so that they make their way down through the exhibits. To its east, an adjoining block contains administration and research departments.

The smallest section of the building is positioned on the western side and functions as a greenhouse for cultivating tropical plants, which are irrigated using rainwater collected from the rooftops.

The entire building is built over a pool of water that emerges around some of the edges. A series of canals feed into the pool from the streets of the new masterplan, while the Adige river runs along the southern boundary of the site.

Renzo Piano has completed a number of buildings over the last 12 months, from The Shard skyscraper in London to a flat-pack auditorium in Italy and a small wooden cabin at the Vitra Campus in Germany.

See more architecture by Renzo Piano »
See more architecture in Italy »

Here are some extra details from Renzo Piano Building Workshop:

The Ex-Michelin Area – The “Le Albere” District, Trento

Overview

The area extends from the railway line and Palazzo delle Albere, on Via Monte Baldo, up to the left bank of the River Adige.

This area has an extremely high potential, but is constrained between two physical and psychological barriers to the east and west: the railway, separating the area from the town’s nearby historical centre, and Via Sanseverino, which acts as an urban boundary between the area itself and the river’s natural environment.

The project is mainly aimed at reintegrating the existing urban landscape and exploiting the site’s relationship with the river environment by making better use of its natural resources.

The project’s secondary goal is to urbanise these localities, which for social and cultural reasons have become marginalised with respect to the rest of the city, by including a range of different structures (such as residences, office buildings, shops, cultural venues, conference centres and recreational areas) and by concentrating their volumes within just one sector of the area in order to free up enough space for a large park.

This new district is primarily characterised by its innovative urban fabric, which features a specific dimensional hierarchy of roads, pathways, squares and open spaces.

Via Sanseverino and Via Monte Baldo provide Road access to the area. This new urban fabric is also relatively traffic-free. It is restricted to residents, taxis and public transport, and offers numerous pedestrian walkways that wind into the courtyards of certain building complexes.

The new district therefore offers an atmosphere of meeting places, open spaces, workplaces and trade areas, where individuals can easily get around on foot and explore the large number of aggregation points within this widely varied environment.

The main east-west streets, which traverse the railway embankment in order to unite the new road scheme with that of the existing urban fabric, are lined along their entire length by two rows of trees, and lead directly into the park area on the shores of the River Adige, where cultural and recreational centers are expected to arise.

In accordance with the plans that have already been established by the City Council, it will be necessary to construct new railway underpasses for vehicles and pedestrians, to render this connection both physically and visually feasible.

The construction volumes have even been calculated based upon an examination and careful analysis of the City of Trento’s historic centre, as well as the way in which the different activities will occupy the urban spaces themselves and the proportions between the width of the streets and the heights of the surrounding buildings.

In fact, due to the height, the cadence and dimensional scale of the buildings themselves, which are comparable to those of the city’s historic centre and the existing industrial structures, the project favours a horizontal interpretation of the relationship between the new buildings and the open spaces foreseen by the design.

The entire new district will feature a number of 4 to 5 storey buildings, with an in-line or courtyard layout, along with the presence of two “special objects”, serving as aggregation points at all hours of the day, for both the complex’s residents and the rest of the city.

The Science Museum

The new Trento science museum is located in the northern portion of the new district foreseen for the Ex-Michelin area, and is housed is what is known as the A-block, situated at the end of the main pedestrian route that connects the area’s higher-end activities with the functions of the greatest public interest. It is also located in close proximity to the new public park and Palazzo delle Albere, with which it will boast a respectful and productive relationship.

The idea was based on establishing a perfect compromise between the need for flexibility and the desire for a precise and consistent response to the scientific content of the cultural project itself. The museum’s magnificent exhibition themes can even be recognised in the form and volumes of the structure itself, all while maintaining the flexible layout typical of a more modern museum.

In addition to the volumetric interpretation of the museum’s scientific contents, the architectural design has also been dictated by the museum’s relationship with its surrounding environment: or rather the new district, including the park, the river and Palazzo delle Albere. Thus, all these inputs have physically taken shape thanks to the clearer definition of the specific architectural elements that make up the rest of the district itself, above all in terms of its tertiary, residential and commercial functions.

The building is made up of a sequence of spaces and volumes (solids and voids) resting (or seemingly floating) upon a large body of water, thus multiplying the effects andvibrations of light and shade. The entire structure is held together at the top by its large roof layers, which are in complete harmony with its forms, thus rendering them recognisable even from the outside.

Starting from the east, the first structure houses functions which are not available to the public, such as administrative and research offices, scientific laboratories and ancillary spaces for on-site staff. Next, we find the lobby. It is aligned with the main axis of the district and traverses the entire depth of the building towards the north, overlooking the park area outside Palazzo delle Albere.

The scientific themes of the mountain and the glacier are subsequently dealt with through a series of exhibition spaces, which gradually rise up from the basement level and nearly “break through” the roof, thus creating an observation point immersed within the environment, from which a true “simulation” of the real experience can be enjoyed. This experience is highlighted by ample exhibition spaces on two or three levels, with ceilings high enough to welcome extremely large sets and backdrops.

The building’s shape and/or “rain forest” function also serves to define is interior space and functionality. In fact, the building represents a large tropical greenhouse which, during certain periods of the year, is even capable of establishing a functional relationship with the specific exhibition stands (even outdoors), in which water, lighting and greenery often play a key role in defining the visitor’s natural surroundings.

The educational and laboratory services for the public are offered in a series of aboveground structures located alongside the exhibition areas, thus promoting interactive experiences for each individual subject matter.

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Building Workshop appeared first on Dezeen.