Hasta La Ideas

London’s Design Museum have unveiled designs by British architect John Pawson for their new home in the former Commonwealth Institute building in west London.

Top: new design museum, second floor
Above: new design museum, second floor showing the permanent exhibition 

Due to open to the public in 2014, the £80 million plans include galleries for permanent and temporary exhibition spaces, an auditorium and a library, which will accompany a separate housing development by Dutch firm OMA.

Above: new Design Museum, entrance foyer

The former Commonwealth Institute, which was completed in the 1960s, hasn’t been used for over ten years but will retain its hyperbolic paraboloid roof structure in the refurbishment.

Above: new Design Museum, exterior view

New glazed entrances will lead in towards the galleries located on the ground floor, basement and second floor, giving the museum three times the exhibition space of its current home at Shad Thames on the Southbank.

Above: existing Commonwealth Institute building, exterior view

See all our stories about the Design Museum here and listen to our podcast interview with John Pawson here.

Above: existing Commonwealth Institute building, interior

Visuals are by Alex Morris Visualisation. Photos of the existing building are by Luke Hayes.

Above: existing Commonwealth Institute building, interior

Here are some more details from the museum:

£80m PLANS UNVEILED TO CREATE WORLD’S LEADING DESIGN MUSEUM IN LONDON

The Design Museum today unveiled plans to create the world’s leading museum of design and architecture at the former Commonwealth Institute building in Kensington, London. Designs for the site have been produced by two of the world’s most innovative architectural practices: John Pawson has redesigned the interior of the Grade 2* listed building and OMA has planned the surrounding residential development.

The move will allow the new Design Museum to become a word class centre for design, nurturing British talent and its international influence on design of all kinds. It will bring the museum into Kensington’s cultural quarter, where it will join the V&A, Science Museum, Natural History Museum, Royal College of Art and Serpentine Gallery, creating a platform for the promotion and support of the next generation of creative talent.

The new building will open to the public in 2014, giving the Design Museum three times more space to showcase its unique collection. The museum aims to double its visitor numbers to 500,000 a year, and will greatly expand its education and public events programme with state of the art facilities.

The 1960s Commonwealth Institute building has lain dormant for over a decade. Its refurbishment will give a neglected London icon a new life and purpose and will revitalise an important area of West London. In July 2010 the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea granted planning permission to Chelsfield Partners and the IIchester Estate to modify the Grade 2* listed building and for a residential development. The design team for the new project has been assisted by Lord Cunliffe, a leading member of the original architectural team for the Commonwealth Institute in 1958, and by James Sutherland, the building’s original structural engineer.

The new Design Museum, which is an £80 million project, will open in 2014. The Design Museum fundraising target is £44.66 million of which it has secured more than 60% through the support of a number of individuals and trusts and foundations.

The Museum announced today that The Dr Mortimer & Theresa Sackler Foundation has pledged to support the project, making a generous donation to create The Sackler Library, a learning resource at the heart of the new Design Museum. Other major donations include The Conran Foundation, which has pledged £17m, The Heritage Lottery Fund which has made a first stage grant towards an application of £4.95m, The Wolfson Foundation, The Sir Siegmund Warburg’s Voluntary Settlement, The Hans and Marit Rausing Charitable Trust, The Atkin Foundation and, in addition, a further £2.75m has been raised in early stage fundraising from a small number of individual donors.

Culture Minister Ed Vaizey, said “It is immensely exciting to see the plans for the new Design Museum at the Commonwealth Institute in Kensington. The UK leads the world in design and architecture and it is entirely appropriate that we should be creating the world’s greatest Design Museum at this iconic London landmark. The new Design Museum will be a truly outstanding visitor attraction, learning resource and celebration of the best of British creativity. It is only through the generosity of others that this has become possible and I would like to extend my gratitude to all those who have made this possible.”

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, said “From the Olympic Park to the new bus for London, our city is a hotbed of creativity, the epicentre of design, and deserves a world-class museum to celebrate the amazing work being created here in the UK and around the world. Housed in an iconic architectural landmark and offering state of the art learning facilities, this new museum puts design firmly in the spotlight and will become a must see destination for visitors as well as designers and students.”

Deyan Sudjic, Director of the Design Museum, said “This is an important step forward for the Design Museum. We are very excited by all the work that John Pawson and the rest of the design team have done. They have put forward a brilliant strategy to bring the former Commonwealth Institute back to life, which will allow the public to see the essential qualities of this historic listed building, and make a wonderful new home for the Design Museum.”

John Pawson, architect, said “The most exciting thing about the project is that, at the end of it all, London will have a world-class museum of design, with galleries for permanent and temporary exhibitions, education spaces and a library. There is particularly nice symbolism in the fact that in making this legacy for future generations, we are saving a work of iconic architecture. I hope the result will demonstrate that you don’t need to demolish old buildings to make wonderful new public space.”

Reinier de Graaf of OMA adds “In conceiving a new future for London’s former Commonwealth Institute, we pay tribute to a period that continues to inform contemporary architecture.”

Sir Stuart Lipton, Chairman, Chelsfield, said “We are delighted to be supporting the Design Museum to realise its vision of becoming the world’s leading centre for design and architecture. Britain’s designers are taking the lead internationally and it is fitting that there will be a world-class centre for design and architecture in London.”

ARCHITECTURAL STATEMENT
JOHN PAWSON

A centre of design for London

The goal of the project is the creation of a world-class museum of design in the heart of London, with galleries for permanent and temporary exhibitions, education spaces and a design reference library. The architectural vision developed to realise this goal has been profoundly shaped by the fact that the new Design Museum’s permanent home is within the skin of an existing building – the Grade 2* listed former Commonwealth Institute, designed by Robert Matthews, Johnson-Marshall & Partners, which opened in 1962. Driving the process of reclaiming this iconic example of post-war British Modernism as a contemporary cultural space has been the wish to preserve and enhance its inherent architectural qualities for future generations of Londoners and visitors to the city. The outcome should be a building that feels as though it has retuned itself.

A new public space in Holland Park

This process of natural evolution and readjustment begins with the character of the relationship of the new Design Museum with its setting in Holland Park. Freedom of access will allow the public to move comfortably from the green spaces of the park to the interior spaces of the building in a relaxed, open and instinctive manner. In line with the wider design strategy for the building, greater transparency is introduced on the north and east facades. Glazed entrances are created to the ground floor foyer and the existing stained glass windows, currently installed on the south façade, are relocated to the north façade, adjacent to the new entrance from Holland Park.

Dynamic spatial experiences

Once inside, visitors will be naturally drawn up through the atrium space towards the hyperbolic paraboloid roof structure – the defining architectural gesture of the original design. The central staircase leads to the mezzanine level – an echo of the original dais, at the centre of the exhibition building. As in the original building, this level offers a chance to view the whole building, as well as providing space for exhibiting a key piece from a visiting exhibition or the permanent collection. As one moves upwards through the central void, so the framed view of the roof will widen and transform, assisted by the enlarged openings in the top floor slab, creating a dynamic experience that will change according to the time of day and the light conditions. Providing sightlines to all of the building’s principal spaces, the central void acts as a key medium for orientation and navigation. From the entrance foyer, a visitor will see the entire route through the building, winding up from the central platform around the opening at first floor level to the permanent exhibition space on the top floor and the sweeping curve of the roof. The material palette is purposefully restricted, with concrete terrazzo floors at basement and ground levels and hardwood used for the remaining floors and also for wall panelling.

Layout

The programme is split between five floors, providing a total around 10,000m2. The museum’s main exhibition space is located on the ground floor, together with the café, bookshop and design store. The first floor contains the administration and learning departments, design reference library and an area of open storage where the museum’s collection may be accessed for research purposes. An exhibition of the permanent collection, designed by Studio Myerscough, is located on the top floor, where the roof soars up to 16m above one’s head, alongside the restaurant, event space and the members’ room, all of which will enjoy views over Holland Park. The second exhibition space and the auditorium are located at basement level, which also accommodates curatorial spaces, workshops, kitchen and back of house areas.

Opening up sightlines to the hyperbolic paraboloid roof

In the existing building, the central concrete section of the roof rises up through the building on two structural supports, arches over the central space and then down towards the top floor. The floor slab opens up around the structure, allowing it to pass through to the floor below. To give the central roof structure the same freedom, two new openings are formed in the new top floor slab. The larger opening relates to the central void and an additional smaller opening visually connects The Sackler Library on the first floor to the permanent exhibition space. The creation of the second opening allows further views up to the roof from the first floor level, as well as allowing views into the workings of the museum for visitors to the permanent exhibitions on the second floor.

Horizontal elements

A key part of the design rationale is for the floor slabs to be clearly expressed as strong horizontal elements. The slab edges are therefore finished in white, as in the original building, contrasting with the timber walls and defining the volumes of the first and second floors. To reinforce this idea, all volumes, including the lift cores on the top floor, are located around the perimeter of the building.

Structure

One of the key elements to the building is the structural design developed by Arup to retain and preserve the original roof structure. These complex proposals will allow the internal floors of the existing building to be demolished, a new basement to be built across the site and the new structure of the museum building to be constructed under the roof.

The existing fabric of the building has shaped how the new structural design has developed. The rhythm of the edge support mullions sets up a typical structural grid of approximately 9m x 9m. Shear walls, built in as part of the service cores distributed through the building, will brace the structural grid.

A series of piles, temporary beams and trusses will be built around and through the existing structure to support the internal roof support columns and the roof edge support mullions. The external walls and internal structure will then be demolished and the new structure built up around the temporary works until it can support the roof. The temporary supports will then be removed and the new structure completed, to allow the fit-out work to commence.

A ridged cloak of glazing will surround the extension to an art centre in Utah proposed by Californian architects Brooks + Scarpa.

The new wing of the Kimball Art Centre will almost triple the size of the existing building, adding new studios and exhibition areas.

A glazed ground floor lobby will wrap around the buildings at ground floor level, connecting the historic block with the extension.

This lobby will open out to a large plaza that will also be used as a workspace for artists in the adjacent metalwork, welding and glass studios.

You can read more stories about studios for artists here.

Here’s a more detailed description from the architects:

Brooks + Scarpa Unveils Proposal for The Kimball Art Center – “The Kimball Cloud”

Brooks + Scarpa has released their proposal for the roughly 22,000 square foot addition to the existing 12,000 square foot 1929 historic structure located in the heart of downtown Park City at the corner of Main Street and Heber Ave.

The design concept for the new Kimball Art Center is to perceptually bring the mesmerizing and seemingly endless deep blue Park City sky directly into the space of the city. Despite the time of year or weather conditions, the sky always seems to quickly return to its infinite and hypnotic clarity, with rarely a cloud in the sky. It provokes a kind of indelible wonder; a dreamlike state of mind that engages the viewer, heightens their sense of awareness, and brings a sense of vitality to the place. The Kimball “Cloud” delivers a new experience and expands art into the broader Park City community, creating a new social space for the 21st century.

The building’s façade creates a visual icon, a glowing beacon that can be seen and experienced from a distance and immediately adjacent. The upper floors are composed of a conventional glazing system that is covered by a rain screen made from a translucent honeycomb material. This translucent, faceted skin is not only aesthetic, but also plays a role in the building’s thermal performance. Below this envelope, the new ground level façade is constructed of very transparent glass and opens directly to the street, while delicately connecting and weaving into the heavy mass of the existing historic Kimball building. Spatially, the lower floor is absorbed into the adjacent existing building and the city, while the upper floors overhang the more transparent level below. The new ‘cloud’ building appears to levitate above the site, while the historic structure feels solid and grounded to the earth. This illusion enhances the buildings, giving them a collective strength that neither building could possess individually.

Interior spaces delicately knit together passive and active uses, allowing the community to view and/or participate in the artistic experience. Rather than simply displaying art for view, the new design reveals to the community the very process by which art is created. Every feature of the building is multivalent and rich with meaning—performing several roles for functional, formal and experiential effect.

At the corner of Main Street and Heber Ave, the creation of a large exterior court links directly to the 20-foot high metal-smithing, welding and glass studios that would use this court daily as their outdoor workspace. The façade between the exterior court and studio is visually clear, opening the Art Center to public view. Large sliding panel doors open and connect the exterior and interior together, so artist and students can use the court seamlessly from inside to out. This court, located midway between the existing Kimball ground floor and basement levels, is connected directly to the street, and allows most of the working studio spaces to be visually linked to the street corner. These spaces flow from the court deep into the building linking the new structure with the existing building. In this configuration, the existing basement is opened up and connected to Main Street along with the existing Kimball ground floor and the new structure. Creating this split-level design at the street level on Main Street and Heber Avenue, serves several other important purposes: it allows for great flexibility, affording the Art Center the ability to easily divide and use the ground level for a variety of purposes and functions, both large and small, while still remaining visually open and not feeling like separated smaller rooms.

The heart of the Art Center, the process by which art is made, is connected to the street corner. Passerby can see deep into the building, viewing people working throughout several studio spaces, the main exhibition space and the many other spaces that are visually linked together. Rather than simply displaying art to the community, the process itself is on display.

Danish architects Henning Larsen and Norwegian landscape architect Gullik Gulliksen have won a competition to design municipal offices and a public square in Trondheim, Norway.

Proposed for the southwest area of Leüthens, the project is entitled Leüthens Kulturhage, which translates as “Leüthen’s cultural garden”, and will also include a theatre and cinema.

Inside the office block, displaced floors accommodating meeting areas and balconies will overlook a large atrium that will face the new square.

The project is expected to complete in 2015.

This year Henning Larsen Architects also completed a concert hall in Iceland – see that project here.

Here’s some more information from the architects:

Henning Larsen Architects and the Norwegian landscape architect Gullik Gulliksen have won the international competition for a new urban district in Trondheim city centre.

With an innovative, open office building and a new cinema next to the city theatre, the project proposal titled ‘Leüthens Kulturhage’ – ‘Leüthen’s Cultural Garden’ – will bring new life to the area. The building will spearhead the development of green public buildings in Norway. Centered around a new square, the two buildings will create a common identity for the area and bring together the existing educational and cultural institutions.

A unanimous jury selected Henning Larsen Architects’ project as winner of the competition in which a number of Danish and Norwegian architecture studios participated. The jury emphasised the winning proposal’s use of the site potential and interaction with the city and surrounding buildings.

The project covers a total of 39,000 m2 and is expected to be completed during 2015. Henning Larsen Architects has worked in Norway for many years. In 1978, Trondheim University (today called The Norwegian University of Science and Technology) at Dragvoll was inaugurated. Currently, the company is working on a new commercial domicile in Oslo.

Chinese architects MAD have sent us new images of a museum they completed earlier this year in the city of Ordos, in the Gobi desert.

Shaped like a large undulating blob, the Ordos Museum is clad in polished metal tiles that are resistant to frequently occurring sandstorms.

Galleries inside the museum are housed in smaller blobs, connected by bridges.

Entrances on both sides of the building allow local residents to use the atrium as a through-route.

You can watch a movie about the building here.

This isn’t the first high-profile project in Ordos, the newly constructed city for a million people – artist Ai Weiwei masterplanned 100 private villas by different architects there back in 2008 – see all our stories about the project here.

Photography is by Iwan Baan. More images of this project can be found on his website.

Here’s some more information from MAD:

MAD’s Ordos Museum Completes

Construction of the MAD designed Ordos Museum has recently been completed in fall 2011. Familiar yet distinct, the museum appears to have either landed in the desert from another world or to always have existed. From atop a dune- like urban plaza, the building is enriched with a convergence of naturalistic interiors, bathed in light. The result is a timeless architecture in a modern city of ruins.

Six years ago, the Inner Mongolia Ordos was an extended landscape of the majestic Gobi desert. Today, it is a urban centre mired in a common controversy in modern Chinese civilization: the conflict between the people’s long standing traditions and their dreams of the future. Architects are asked to develop the urban landscape and yet need to be mindful of the delicate sustenance of minority cultures and its future potentials. In 2005, the local bureaucrats established a new master plan for its city development. Upon the initialization of this master plan, MAD was commissioned by the Ordos city government to conceive a museum to be a centerpiece to the new great city.

Influenced by Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes, MAD envisioned a mysterious abstract form capable of fostering an alternate, timeless development of Chinese tradition and future. Whilst the surface of this shape functions as a metal container critical to protect the interior from the harsh winters and frequent sand storms of the region, metaphorically this external layer operates as a shield protecting the precious culture and history of the city from the unknown growth of the city. The museum appears to float over a waving sand hill, a gesture saluting the landscapes which have now been supplanted by the streets and buildings of the new cityscape. This plaza is now a favorite amongst the locals who gather their families and friends to explore, play or lounge in the pleasant landscape.

Entering the museum presents visitors with a strong contrast to the exterior: an airy monumental cave flushed with natural light through skylights. The cave links to a canyon which carves out a void between the galleries and exhibition hall and is brightly illuminated at the top. Patrons maneuver along the base of these primitive surroundings and through the light across mid-air tectonic bridges, reminiscent of the intersection of the past and the future of the Gobi landscape. Visitors will repeatedly cross these sky bridges and reflect upon their journey from a variety of picturesque vantages.

The local community, as well, is encouraged to pass through the base of the central canyon which connects the two public entries at opposite ends without entering the exhibition hall or galleries. The varying internalized flows of circulation are guided by a succession of light and shadow, at times mysteriously shaded and occasionally brilliantly bright yet consistently engaging.

For the museum employees, a south facing, naturally lit interior garden is shared by the office and research programmes of the museum, creating a natural work environment.

The completion of the museum has provided the local citizens a place to embrace and reflect upon the fast paced development of their city. People meet organically in the naturalistic landscapes of the museum, an intersection of natural and human development.


Location: Ordos, China Typology: Museum
Site Area: 27,760 sqm Building Area: 41, 227 sqm Building Height: 40 m

Directors: Ma Yansong, Yosuke Hayano, Dang Qun
Design Team: Shang Li, Andrew C. Bryant, Howard Jiho Kim, Matthias Helmreich, Linda Stannieder, Zheng Tao, Qin Lichao, , Sun Jieming, Yin Zhao, Du Zhijian, Yuan Zhongwei, Yuan Ta, Xie Xinyu, Liu Weiwei, Felipe Escudero, Sophia Tang, Diego Perez, Art Terry, Jtravis B Russett, Dustin Harris

Associate Engineers: China Institute of Building Standard Design & Research Mechanical Engineer: The Institute of Shanxi Architectural Design and Research
Façade/cladding Consultants: SuP Ingenieure GmbH, Melendez & Dickinson Architects Construction Contractor: Huhehaote construction Co., Ltd
Façade Contractor: Zhuhai King Glass Engineering CO.LTD

Dezeen in Israel: here are some images of the recently opened new wing at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, which has a dramatically faceted atrium piercing its centre.

Designed by American architect Preston Scott Cohen, the Herta and Paul Amir Building has a spiralling plan with two storeys above ground and three underground floors.

Galleries overlook the 26-metre-high atrium through long windows that slice through its angled walls.

Although the building has a triangular plan, these exhibition galleries are rectangular and display art, design, architecture and photography.

Walls fold around the entrances to these rooms and appear on approach to be wafer-thin.

The museum has a tessellated concrete exterior where windows match the shapes of the triangular and rectangular panels.

You can see more stories about Israeli architecture and interiors here, or if you’re interested in furniture and product design from Israel you can check out our special feature here.

Photography is by Amit Geron.

Here’s some more information from the museum:

Herta and Paul Amir Building
Tel Aviv Museum of Art

The design for the Amir Building arises directly from the challenge of providing several floors of large, neutral, rectangular galleries within a tight, idiosyncratic, triangular site. The solution is to “square the triangle” by constructing the levels on different axes, which deviate significantly from floor to floor. In essence, the building’s levels—two above grade and three below—are structurally independent plans stacked one on top of the other.

These levels are unified by the “Lightfall”: an 87-foot-high, spiraling, top-lit atrium, whose form is defined by subtly twisting surfaces that curve and veer up and down through the building. The complex geometry of the Lightfall’s surfaces (hyperbolic parabolas) connect the disparate angles of the galleries; the stairs and ramped promenades along them serve as the surprising, continually unfolding vertical circulation system; while the natural light from above is refracted into the deepest recesses of the half-buried building. Cantilevers accommodate the discrepancies between plans and provide overhangs at the perimeter.

In this way, the Amir Building combines two seemingly irreconcilable paradigms of the contemporary art museum: the museum of neutral white boxes, which provides optimal, flexible space for the exhibition of art, and the museum of spectacle, which moves visitors and offers a remarkable social experience. The Amir Building’s synthesis of radical and conventional geometries produces a new type of museum experience, one that is as rooted in the Baroque as it is in the Modern.

Conceptually, the Amir Building is related to the Museum’s Brutalist main building (completed 1971; Dan Eytan and Yitzchak Yashar, architects). At the same time, it also relates to the larger tradition of Modern architecture in Tel Aviv, as seen in the multiple vocabularies of Mendelsohn, the Bauhaus and the White City. The gleaming white parabolas of the façade are composed of 465 differently shaped flat panels made of pre-cast reinforced concrete. Achieving a combination of form and material that is unprecedented in the city, the façade translates Tel Aviv’s existing Modernism into a contemporary and progressive architectural language.

Architect: Preston Scott Cohen, Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts
Project Team: Preston Scott Cohen, principal in charge of design, Amit Nemlich, project architect; Tobias Nolte, Bohsung Kong, project assistants

Consultants:
Project Managers: CPM Construction Managment Ltd.
Structural Engineers: YSS Consulting Engineers Ltd., Dani Shacham
HVAC: M. Doron – I. Shahar & Co., Consulting Eng. Ltd.
Electrical: U. Brener – A. Fattal Electrical & Systems Engineering Ltd.
Lighting: Suzan Tillotson, New York
Safety: S. Netanel Engineers Ltd
Security: H.M.T
Elevators: ESL- Eng. S. Lustig – Consulting Engineers Ltd.
Acoustics: M.G. Acistical Consultants Ltd.
Traffic: Dagesh Engineering, Traffic & Road Design Ltd.
Sanitation: Gruber Art System Engineering Ltd.
Soil: David David
Survey: B. Gattenyu
Public Shelter: K.A.M.N
Waterproofing: Bittelman
Kitchen Design: Zonnenstein

Key Dates:
Architectural competition: 2003
Design development and construction documents: 2005-06
Groundbreaking: 2007
Opening: November 2, 2011

Size: 195,000 square feet (18,500 square meters), built on a triangular footprint of approximately 48,500 square feet (4,500 square meters)
Cost: $55 million (estimated)

Principal Spaces:
Israeli Art galleries: 18,500 square feet
Architecture and Design galleries: 7,200 square feet
Prints and Drawings galleries: 2,500 square feet
Temporary exhibitions gallery: 9,000 square feet
Photography study center and gallery: 3,700 square feet
Art library: 10,000 square feet
Auditorium: 7,000 square feet
Restaurant: 3,200 square feet
Offices: 2,700 square feet

Principal Materials: Pre-cast reinforced concrete (facades), cast-in-place concrete (Lightfall), glass, acoustical grooved maple (ceilings in lobby and library and auditorium walls) and steel (structural frame)