Hasta La Ideas

News: “An architecture challenge doesn’t come much better than this,” says David Chipperfield, who has been named winner in the competition to design a new home for the Nobel Prize in Stockholm (+ slideshow).

David Chipperfield Architects saw off competition from Swedish studios Wingårdh and Johan Celsing Arkitektkontor to land the prestigious commission to create the Nobel Center – an exhibition centre and events venue for the award that recognises advances in science and culture.

“I think all projects are important but this project has enormous meaning, not just for the city of Stockholm but internationally. An architecture challenge doesn’t come much better than this,” said Chipperfield.

The architect’s vision is for a shimmering brass-clad building on the waterfront. It will be fully glazed on the ground floor, opening out to a new city park on the sunny south-eastern side of the site.

“The jury finds the lightness and openness of the building very appealing and consistent with the Nobel Foundation’s explicit ambition to create an open and welcoming centre for the general public,” said Nobel Foundation executive director Lars Heikensten, who was a member of the judging panel.

“We view the winning proposal as a concrete interpretation of the Nobel Prize as Sweden’s most important symbol in the world. Stockholm will gain a building – magnificent but without pomp, powerful yet graceful – with qualities like those the City Hall gave the capital a century ago.”

Fellow jury member Per Wästberg added: “We view the winning proposal as a concrete interpretation of the Nobel Prize as Sweden’s most important symbol in the world. Stockholm will gain a building – magnificent but without pomp, powerful yet graceful – with qualities like those the City Hall gave the capital a century ago.”

As well as hosting the annual award ceremony each December, the building will provide a public centre for exhibitions, educational activities, events and meetings.

“It can be spectacular on its greatest night, but also it can be very useful and functional and working the rest of the year,” said Chipperfield.

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British architect David Chipperfield is the fourth in our A-Zdvent calendar of architects. He was last year’s director of the Venice Biennale and is best known for designing museums and galleries, inlcuding the Hepworth Wakefield in the UK (pictured).

See more architecture by David Chipperfield »

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News: British architect David Chipperfield has been named as the architecture laureate for the 2013 Praemium Imperiale arts prize, awarded annually by the Japan Art Association.

The Praemium Imperiale is awarded in the fields of painting, sculpture, architecture, music and theatre/film, and David Chipperfield will recieve the accolade alongside British sculptor Antony Gormley, producer and screenwriter Francis Ford Coppola, Italian painter Michelangelo Pistoletto and Spanish tenor and conductor Plácido Domingo.

Chipperfield’s best-known projects include the Stirling Prize-winning Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach am Neckar, America’s Cup Building in Valencia and the reconstruction of the Neues Museum in Berlin. His latest works in the UK include two art galleries – The Hepworth Wakefield and Turner Contemporary – and he is currently working on a photography museum in Morocco and a museum of fine arts in Reims, France.

He was also the director of the most recent Venice Architecture Biennale and received the Royal Gold Medal from the RIBA in 2010.

Each of the five Praemium Imperiale laureates receives £100,000, a diploma and a medal, which will be presented by the Japan Art Association at a ceremony taking place in Japan this October.

The late Danish architect Henning Larsen was last year’s architecture laureate, while past winners include Richard Rogers, Tadao Ando, Alvaro Siza and Zaha Hadid.

See more stories about David Chipperfield on Dezeen »

Photograph by Bruno Cordioli.

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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.

With the Venice Architecture Biennale opening next week, here’s a full transcript of our interview with its director David Chipperfield, who explains the thinking behind this year’s theme, Common Ground.

Chipperfield stresses the need for the profession to address “the 99.99% of the rest of the world which architects are not dealing with.” Otherwise he says, architects risk being relegated to being “urban decorators.”

Above: an edited video of the interview with Chipperfield, which we originally published in May. See below for the previously unpublished full transcript.

Speaking to Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs, Chipperfield emphasises the need for shared, public space to be higher on the architectural agenda, with less attention paid to impressive one-off projects like opera houses, theatres and museums. “What about social housing? What about office buildings and just normal architecture? That’s more difficult.”

He also called for architects to more openly acknowledge the inspiration they draw from each other’s work rather than placing themselves apart on pedestals, admitting “we are inspired by our colleagues, I mean maybe only out of the corner of our eye, and maybe we don’t want to admit it all the time.”

The interview took place in May at the press conference to launch the biennale at the Italian Cultural Institute in London. The Venice Architecture Biennale is open to the public from 29 August to 25 November and Dezeen will be reporting from the press preview and vernissage next week.

Here’s the full transcript of the interview:

Marcus Fairs: We’re at the Italian Cultural Institute in London where today we’ve had the press launch of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2012 and I’m with the curator David Chipperfield. David, tell us a little bit about what the Venice Architecture Biennale is first of all. For someone who has never been there, tell us what is it, why is happens and what your involvement is.

David Chipperfield: The Architecture Biennale was stimulated by the pre-existence of the Art Biennale which has been around a much longer time; I think the Architecture Biennale only started in the late seventies, and took the form of the Art Biennale.

Essentially it’s in two parts; there are the national pavilions. Most countries have national pavilions, Britain has one obviously. The national pavilions are the responsibility of each country to curate and select participants and again in the case of the Art Biennale normally it’s a selected artist. However, in the centre of this whole zoo is the main exhibition presentation which is the responsibility of the director/curator, and that occupies physically the three hundred and fifty or so metres of the Corderie Arsenale which is the military basin where boats were built and ropes were made.

So the biennale infrastructure has grown over the years to take up not only that building but the territory around it and actually also take on the responsibility for what’s called the Central Pavilion in the Giardini. So it’s a major exhibition of architecture which should conform to a theme set by the director. The director is responsible for the theme, and then inviting participants to show work or participate under the umbrella of that theme.

Marcus Fairs: And as the curator, as the director, what is the theme that you’ve chosen for this year?

David Chipperfield: My title is Common Ground and in the context of an architectural biennale clearly it has a double meaning. We tend to use common ground, interestingly, not about physical things. It’s now something you hear on Radio 4 when someone says I had a meeting with the prime minister this morning and we have common ground on this issue. So it’s normally a way of describing what two different positions might come together to share. Clearly its origins were physical; there must have been “that’s my ground, that’s your ground, this is common ground”. So in the context of an architectural biennale that reference back to the physical is quite clear.

So why I like this title is that it talks about the intellectual – you know, common ground as we use it, in other words what ideas do we share, where can we meet – but it also clearly is a metaphor for the idea of public space, shared space, the collective, and in my opinion that is something that really needs to be back on the agenda. I think as a society at the moment we are inspired by the financial collapse of all those things that we thought were secure. I think it’s inspired us all to think a bit more carefully about the relationship between our position as individuals, our own trajectory, and what we belong to socially as something we might call a collective.

Marcus Fairs: In the past architecture biennales have sometimes been a bit like a zoo, I think you used the word zoo before. And you mentioned in the press conference that architects can be like perfume brands at duty free on a pedestal; singular and isolated. How are you going to try to avoid that happening at this year’s biennale?

David Chipperfield: Well, the whole thing of Common Ground is in a way trying to get everybody off their pedestal and standing on a ground which I think we share. I think this is the presentation of architects, they are responsible for doing this a bit themselves in their sort of need to brand themselves, but I think the media does it and it’s an issue we all have to deal with. I don’t actually think it’s quite as true, you know I know a lot of those architects, I’m fortunate enough to sort of share an odd whiskey now and again in a bar in Vienna or Berlin or whatever and you know as soon as we’ve had the first whiskey you realise that we all share a lot of ideas. We share a lot of predicaments and concerns, but there’s no place to articulate those beyond the bar.

So I’d like to show that these talents are grounded in something that connects them horizontally (which is what I would describe as an architectural culture) and I want to give oxygen to that architectural culture and say you know, we are the children of our parents. We have been taught by somebody, those teachers taught us certain things which have informed us. We are inspired by our colleagues, I mean maybe only out of the corner of our eye, and maybe we don’t want to admit it all the time but you know what another architect does what an architect of another generation has taught me, what a younger architect has taught me, you know I learn from students that I teach.

That idea of affiliation, of acknowledging where ideas have come from and for us to expose those ideas and share them a bit more. I think it’s a way to be more honest about our common position as opposed to everybody you know shining their wares and putting them on a stand and saying this is what I do, and that’s what somebody else does. I want to break those barriers down.

Marcus Fairs: You said in the press conference that it would be about architecture, about architectural culture rather than architects. What kind of projects will be in the biennale? How will the visitor experience – and how will you get across to the visitor – this idea?

David Chipperfield: We’ll that’s a challenge. I mean it’s all well and good to say what I’ve said. My ambition is clear and it’s been very reassuring to find that architects are willing to join that idea even if they’re a bit stumped at the beginning to know what to do about it, but there is a willingness to think about that. Of course when I say it’s not about architects I need architects to talk about architecture, so it is about them as well, I’m not trying to suppress them but you know in a way ‘the play’s the thing’ as it were, in Shakespeare.

I want great actors but it’s the story which I want to come out, but I do need good actors to do that with. You know the repertoire of actors, the cast, is impressive, and they are all generationally spread from people like Rafael Moneo, Norman Foster, Luigi Snozzi, you know a generation of architects who are now in their seventies down to kids as I would call them, you know 30 to 40. So I think that’s, you know, the idea of finding different connectivities, I mean that’s very important, and also to remind everybody how these layers are important.

What form it takes? I mean it’s a one-by-one thing, each architect is thinking about ways of representing either affinities that they have, inspirations they have, or projects which they might do together as a collaboration with others, or a topic. So it’s a diverse attempt to demonstrate ideas. In a way it hasn’t started with image; it has started with ideas and now we’re struggling to make sure that it has an image because there is a responsibility within the biennale to the superficial if you like. It does have to attract one scenographically, it can’t just be good, earnest ideas.

Marcus Fairs: But you’ve not said to the architects, send us your latest model in a box. You said to them respond to the theme we’ve set, the Common Ground theme, and do something new and specific around that theme.

David Chipperfield: They’re not allowed to send their project in a box; it goes straight back! I mean, that’s not the idea. It may be that some are showing some models of their project in order to illustrate something but I want their contribution to be contextualised by ideas not their CV saying this is my last project, this is how I work, this is who I am, and this is the project that shows who I am and how I do it. I mean that is a context, but it’s not a context I want to show. If someone brings a project or a number of projects – there’s nobody actually doing it in such an explicit way, but there are people showing projects – the reason that project is there is contextualised by an idea.

Marcus Fairs: You mentioned about the economic crisis and the time in which this biennale is taking place. What are your ambitions for it, do you see it as an exhibition that makes a statement about where we’re at in architecture? Do you see it as something that might change the direction or open people’s eyes to a new way of working, or simply reminds them of something that’s perhaps being missed in contemporary culture?

David Chipperfield: I don’t think that you can do an exhibition with an explicit ambition. I’m not out to teach anybody anything, I’m trying to give some oxygen to some thoughts and I think that fronting up to the fact that architecture is probably, as a peace time activity, the most collaborative thing you can do, you know, outside of a war. It’s the thing that galvanises and draws upon the most resources and participation, collaboration. I can’t think of anything that does the same… well, film. But even then, to be honest, a film doesn’t require the people that live in that area to deal with it so you can go to a movie house and not got to a movie house.

So I can’t think of anything that really requires so much buy-in, both in terms of professional buy-in and also from the general public. I think that that’s an issue that we have to articulate better because the dialogue and possibilities we have as architects to do things is predetermined by the way that we sit within society. If we isolate ourselves, and we’re regarded with suspicion then society doesn’t trust us to do things and also we can’t engage society.

I mean we have a confrontational relationship and good architecture is born of collaboration I think. So if there’s an agenda, that’s what it is, but it’s not written above the door that this is what I’m up to, but clearly I want us to come clean to say intellectually, physically and even in our built environment we are part of something which is more collaborative that anything else and therefore, let’s look at architecture from that point of view.

Marcus Fairs: You did say in the press conference as well that we don’t have much common ground between ourselves and the public when talking about the architecture profession. Could you elaborate on why you think that might be?

David Chipperfield: Because I don’t think that we’ve got good methods by which we talk about the diverse concerns that make a building happen. Look at this country: planning is now called development control, you know as if it’s sort of someone with a chair and a whip tying to stop this animal escape; it’s sort of a negative idea of architecture. By the way, I don’t blame it for being like that. As an architect one sits on both sides of the table, we are just as furious about bad buildings as normal people are and you know, why the hell did that project ever get built? We’re capable of feeling that probably more than most people. But the level of discussion and dialogue and the confrontation that seems to exist in the process so often you can see it coming and it just dooms the process. You can see that these things are just not coordinating.

I think what one can see, always, is what I call sort of green-field or green-zone projects. You do a museum, you’ve got a very informed board of trustees, a good director, there’s a budget which is reasonable, there’s a clear desire to do the building… that’s not difficult then. But what about social housing? What about office buildings and just normal architecture where people have not assembled themselves around something and said ‘we must find a good architect, we must do a good building’. We don’t have to worry about those things so much, you know railway stations, opera houses, theatres, museums.

The profession has proved it can do good versions of those; sometimes maybe a bit too spectacular and a bit too iconic but so what? What about the 99.99% of the rest of the world which architects are not dealing with? It’s easy to have a good dialogue about a museum with an informed board of trustees. How do you go out there and have a discussion about other things? That’s more difficult.

Marcus Fairs: And finally, we’re coming out perhaps of an era of the superstar architect and the iconic project and the all the attention that was lavished on those kind of things, but your office has been, I was going to say quietly, but not exactly quietly, but very successfully working away with a much more gentle, beautiful, historically contextual type of work. How do you see the architecture scene today? And do you think we’re at a moment of change away from that kind of star system?

David Chipperfield: We’ll always have icons. I mean we’ve always had icons. From my office I can see Westminster Palace and Big Ben and you think ‘what a funny building’, but you know how glad one is that is it there. If it was rationalised, and wasn’t so fanciful it wouldn’t be half of what it is. I don’t think icons go away, and I think we need icons sometimes. Does everything need to be turned into an icon? Does an extension on the back of someone’s house need to become an icon? Not because I don’t think it’s appropriate, I just think that it becomes slightly irrelevant to the rest of the architectural debate.

I mean that’s my concern, that if what we are doing becomes a bespoke moment that architecture now only becomes those special moments, we become like urban decorators. You know, as soon as someone can afford, can pay for it and the conditions are right we can get up from our beds and do it; I think that’s really dangerous. Therefore, I’m concerned that those projects where one can push give an inspiration to the normal. That’s my issue with architecture that becomes self-referential, that it becomes about itself and while it might be a beautiful opera house, it might be a beautiful museum, has it given any clue as to how other issues might be dealt with? I think sometimes that’s not the task, the task is to stand free and alone but you know most of us have to do other things which are not just self-referential monuments. Therefore, I am interested in the continuity of the profession, not just those special moments of opportunity.

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says David Chipperfield appeared first on Dezeen.