The talented Alex da Corte (who was born in New Jersey and lived Caracas, Venezuela for some of his childhood) says that his stunning new show “Delirium I” is an adaptation of “A Season in Hell”—a poem…
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For the third time in Art Paris Art Fair’s brief but compelling history, design was showcased alongside contemporary art; enhancing the intrinsic link and blurred lines between the two entities. Exhibited within the fair’s ArtDesign platform, the range…
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Shigeru Ban‘s design for an art gallery opening this summer in Aspen, Colorado, has been demonstrated by a new architectural model, following news that the Japanese architect will receive this year’s Pritzker Prize (+ slideshow).
Set to open on 9 August, the new Aspen Art Museum will be a four-storey building containing six separate galleries, more than tripling the amount of exhibition space in the museum’s current facility.
Shigeru Ban designed the 3000 square-metre building for a site at the corner of East Hyman Avenue in downtown Aspen. Its primary feature will be a basket-weave cladding that wraps around two elevations.
A grand staircase will be slotted between this woven exterior and the interior structure. There will also be a glass elevator dubbed the “moving room” that will connect galleries at the northeast corner.
Glass floors will allow visitors to see between storeys, while a sculpture garden located on the roof will offer views towards Ajax Mountain.
The inaugural exhibition will feature the work of artists Yves Klein and David Hammons, but the museum also plans to host an exhibition dedicated to Shigeru Ban’s humanitarian housing projects.
Here’s some more information about the gallery from Aspen Art Museum:
The New Aspen Art Museum
Located on the corner of South Spring Street and East Hyman Avenue in Aspen’s downtown core a few blocks from Aspen’s main skiing/snowboarding mountain, Ajax Mountain, the new AAM is Shigeru Ban’s first U.S. museum. Of its design, Ban states: “Designing the Aspen Art Museum presented a very exciting opportunity to create a harmony between architecture and Aspen’s surrounding beauty while also responding to the need for the dialogue between artwork, audience, and the space itself.”
Ban’s vision for the new AAM is based on transparency and open view planes—inviting those outside to engage with the building’s interior, and providing those within the opportunity to see their exterior surroundings as part of a uniquely Aspen Art Museum experience. The new Museum features 12,500 square feet of flexible exhibition space in six primary gallery spaces spread over the museum’s four levels – more than tripling the amount of exhibition space in the museum’s current facility. The galleries have a ceiling height of fourteen feet, most infused with natural light.
Visitors will enter the new AAM through a main public entry on the north side of the building along East Hyman Avenue, which allows access to the main reception area, as well as the new AAM’s two ground floor galleries. From there, visitors may choose their path through museum spaces -ascending to upper levels either via Ban’s “moving room” glass elevator in the northeast corner of the new facility, or the grand staircase on the east side of the facility perpendicular to South Spring Street. The grand staircase – an interstitial three-level passageway situated between the building’s woven composite exterior grid and interior structure – is intersected by a glass wall dividing the stairway into a ten-foot-wide exterior space, and a six-foot-wide interior space. The unique passage allows for the natural blending of outdoor and indoor spaces and will feature mobile pedestals where art will be exhibited.
After climbing the grand staircase to the roof deck sculpture garden, visitors will enjoy unparalleled, sweeping vistas of Aspen’s internationally recognised environment. This will be the only unobstructed public rooftop view anywhere in town of the iconic Ajax Mountain. The roof deck will also be an activated exhibition and event space, with a café and bar and outdoor screening space. Shigeru Ban envisioned that visitors would navigate the new AAM the way a mountain is navigated when skiing or snowboarding – by proceeding to the very top of the building and descending from floor to floor.
Other features of the museum’s architecture include: “walkable” skylights that will assist in illuminating the single main gallery on the second level; two galleries, an education space, bookstore/museum shop and on-site artist apartment on the ground floor; and, on the new AAM’s lower level, three galleries, art storage, and art preparation spaces.
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Shigeru Ban’s new Aspen Art Museum appeared first on Dezeen.
A wall of windows winches up and down to reveal the interior of this gallery renovation in Los Altos, California, by Seattle architect Tom Kundig (+ slideshow).
Kundig, the principal designer at Olson Kundig Architects, added the new mechanical facade to a vacant 1950s building at the heart of the Silicon Valley community, creating a temporary gallery space able to reveal its contents to the neighbourhood.
The five-metre-high grid of windows is hooked up to a system of gears, pulleys and counterweights. To set them into motion, a pedal must be engaged to unlock the safety mechanism, before a hand wheel can be rotated to begin lifting or lowering the facade.
In this way, 242 State Street is able to “morph from an enclosed structure into an environment that invites the community into the space,” says Kundig.
The interior, previously used as an Italian restaurant, was left largely unchanged to create a flexible space for displaying different types of artwork.
Kundig did however raise the roof by half a storey to create a more generous setting for larger pieces, and inserted a row of skylights to allow more natural light to reach the back of the space.
A pivoting door was also added to provide access to the gallery when the facade is closed, while the steel beams supporting the pulley system could for be used to support signage.
The gallery opened at the end of 2013 as one of the ten venues for Project Los Altos, a local art initiative launched by SF MoMA. Artist Spencer Finch created a site-specific installation at the front of the space – a grid of colourful squares that resonated with the new facade – while Jeremy Blake installed a digital projection behind a temporary screen.
Photography is by Bruce Damonte.
Here’s a short project description from Tom Kundig:
Los Altos, California
Located in downtown Los Altos, the highlight of this 2,500 square foot adaptive re-use project is the introduction of a new facade that enables the circa 1950’s building to morph from an enclosed structure into an environment that invites the community into the space.
The transformation was achieved by essentially replacing the entire front facade with a double-height, floor-to-ceiling window wall that can be raised or lowered depending upon the needs of the user.
The window wall is operated by engaging a pedal – to unlock the safety mechanism – then turning a hand wheel which activates a series of gears and pulleys that opens the sixteen-foot by ten-foot, counterweighted two-thousand pound window wall. When the window wall is closed, visitors to the shop enter through a ten-foot-tall pivot door.
In addition to the front facade, other changes to the building included raising the roof by half-of-one story to create a better proportioned interior volume, and installing skylights to bring in more natural light.
The building most recently served as one of the temporary off-site locations for SF MoMA’s Project Los Altos. Beyond the introduction of the window wall, the interior was relatively untouched, leaving the space as flexible as possible for its future tenant.
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facade using gears and pulleys appeared first on Dezeen.
New York architect Steven Holl has released two movies about the Sifang Art Museum in Nanjing, China, a building designed to recreate the “parallel perspectives” that are characteristic of Chinese landscape paintings.
The first of the two movies depicts a typical day at the museum, which is located at the entrance to an architectural complex within the Laoshan National Forest Park. The second is a guided tour from Steven Holl that explains how he and collaborating Chinese architect Li Hu came up with the design.
According to Holl, the building was designed as a sequence of walls that angle in different directions to confuse a visitor’s sense of perspective.
“It gives you a feeling of mystery about the space. It’s not really clear what’s parallel to what,” he says. “This had to be worked out on the site. We had to actually position these walls while standing and manipulating the space on the site, that was the only way it could be done.”
The concept to create “parallel perspectives” around the building was inspired by the Chinese artists who rejected the single-point-perspective approach of Western painters in favour of images that allow the viewer to travel between vistas.
“The first drawings were about the courtyard,” says Holl. “You can see the way the landscape is organised in these parallel perspective walls, creating conditions where there’s not really the sense of a vanishing point but there’s a kind of a sense of warping the space.”
The base of the building is a black concrete volume surrounded by walls imprinted with the texture of bamboo, while the upper section is an illuminated glass tunnel raised up on columns. It is surrounded by a landscape of fields and pools.
“This landscape comes down to an edge, but the edge isn’t quite yet the building because there’s this edge of bamboo against a freestanding wall which also creates an ante space before you get to the condition of the parallel perspective,” says Holl.
Galleries are located on all three floors of the building, creating places for displaying contemporary art and sculpture. “The condition of space isn’t exactly box-like, but it is more or less orthogonal and that gives a good background for the art,” added the architect.
Movies were produced by Spirit of Space. Photography is by Xia Zhi.
Here’s some extra information from Steven Holl Architects:
Steven Holl Architects presents two films on the Sifang Art Museum
Steven Holl Architects in collaboration with Spirit of Space has created two short films on the Sifang Art Museum, which opened in November 2013 in Nanjing, China.
The film series explores the changing perspectives as visitors move through the new Sifang Art Museum, from the lush green landscape of the Pearl Spring near Nanjing, through the Museum’s entry court and lower gallery, to its floating upper gallery. The film, A Conversation with Steven Holl, presents Steven Holl on site, as he explains the design concept for the new building.
Designed by Steven Holl with Li Hu, the Sifang Art Museum explores the shifting viewpoints, layers of space, and expanses of mist and water, which characterise the deep alternating spatial mysteries of the composition of Chinese painting. The museum is formed by a “field” of parallel perspective spaces and garden walls in black bamboo-formed concrete over which a light “figure” hovers. The straight passages on the ground level gradually turn into the winding passage of the gallery above. Suspended high in the air, the upper gallery unwraps in a clockwise turning sequence and culminates at “in-position” viewing of the city of Nanjing in the distance. This visual axis creates a link back to the great Ming Dynasty capital city.
The courtyard is paved in recycled Old Hutong bricks from the destroyed courtyards in the centre of Nanjing. Limiting the colours of the museum to black and white connects it to ancient Chinese paintings, but also gives a background to feature the colours and textures of the artwork and architecture exhibited within. Bamboo, previously growing on the site, has been used in bamboo-formed concrete, with a black penetrating stain. The museum is heated and cooled by geothermal wells, and features a storm water recycling system.
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of mystery” says Steven Holl appeared first on Dezeen.
Volta Art Fair (in New York City this year from 6-9 March 2014) continues to offer a unique, fresh and edgy alternative to those from more established galleries participating in the bigger fairs like The Armory Show…
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News: British designer Thomas Heatherwick has unveiled plans to create a new art gallery at the V&A Waterfront museum in Cape Town by hollowing out sections of a grain silo complex.
Presented at the Design Indaba 2014 conference this week, Heatherwick Studio‘s proposal is to give the V&A Waterfront a building dedicated to contemporary African art within the cluster of 42 concrete tubes that make up a historic grain silo structure.
“How do you turn 42 vertical concrete tubes into a place to experience contemporary culture? Our thoughts wrestled with the extraordinary physical facts of the building,” explained Thomas Heatherwick.
“There is no large open space within the densely packed tubes and it is not possible to experience these volumes from inside,” he continued. “Rather than strip out the evidence of the building’s industrial heritage, we wanted to find a way to enjoy and celebrate it. We could either fight a building made of concrete tubes or enjoy its tube-iness.”
A elliptical section will be hollowed out from the centre of the nine-storey building to create a grand atrium that will be filled with light from a glass roof overhead. Some silo chambers will be carved open at ground level to accommodate exhibition galleries, while others will accommodate elevators.
Heatherwick added: “Unlike many conversions of historic buildings that have grand spaces ready to be repurposed, this building has none. The project has become about imagining an interior carved from within an infrastructural object whilst celebrating the building’s character.”
Layers of render and paint will be removed from the existing facades to reveal the raw concrete of the silos, while windows will be created from bulging transparent pillows.
“Thomas Heatherwick understood how to interpret the industrial narrative of the building, and this was the major breakthrough,” said V&A Waterfront CEO David Green. “His design respects the heritage of the building while bringing iconic design and purpose to the building.”
Named Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA), the building will be a partnership between V&A Waterfront and entrepreneur Jochen Zeitz, whose art collection will provide the museum’s permanent exhibition within some of the 80 proposed galleries.
Education facilities and sit-specific exhibition areas will be provided within the existing underground tunnels. Other features will include a rooftop sculpture garden, an art conservation facility, bookshops, and cafe and restaurant areas.
Heatherwick will partner with local firms Van Der Merwe Miszewski, Rick Brown Associates and Jacobs Parker on the delivery and fit out of the museum.
Read on for the press release from V&A Waterfront:
V&A Waterfront unveils architectural plans by Heatherwick Studio for the historic Grain Silo Complex
Imagine forty‐two 33-metre high concrete tubes each with a diameter of 5.5 metres, with no open space to experience the volume from within. Imagine redesigning this into a functional space that will not only pay tribute to its original industrial design and soul, but will become a major, not-for-profit cultural institution housing the most significant collection of contemporary art from Africa and its Diaspora.
The brief given to Heatherwick Studio was to reimagine the Grain Silo Complex at the V&A Waterfront with an architectural intervention inspired by its own historic character. The project called for a solution that would be unique for Africa and create the highest possible quality of exhibition space for the work displayed inside.
The V&A Waterfront’s challenge to repurpose what was once the tallest building on the Cape Town skyline caught the imagination of internationally acclaimed designer Thomas Heatherwick and his innovative team of architects.
This was a chance to do more than just appropriate a former industrial building to display art, but to imagine a new kind of museum in an African context.
The R500‐million redevelopment project, announced in November 2013 as a partnership between the V&A Waterfront and Jochen Zeitz will retain and honour the historic fabric and soul of the building while transforming the interior into a unique, cutting‐edge space to house the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA). Considered the most extensive and representative collection of contemporary art from Africa, the Zeitz Collection has been gifted in perpetuity to this non‐profit institution by ex‐Puma CEO and Chairman, Jochen Zeitz. The collection will be showcased in 9,500m2 of custom‐designed space spread over nine floors, of which 6,000 m2 will be dedicated exhibition space.
Heatherwick Studio, based in London, is recognised internationally for projects including the UK Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, The London 2012 Olympic Cauldron, the New Bus for London and the redevelopment of Pacific Place, a 640,000m2 complex in the centre of Hong Kong.
For the Zeitz MOCAA project, Heatherwick Studio will partner with three local delivery partners; Van Der Merwe Miszewski (VDMMA), Rick Brown Associates (RBA) and Jacobs Parker. Jacobs Parker will be the lead designer for the Museum fit out.
The key challenge has been to preserve the original industrial identity of the building, which is heritage listed, and to retain choice pieces of machinery to illustrate and maintain its early working character. Heatherwick Studio has met the brief with characteristic boldness and creative flair. The final design reveals a harmonious union of concrete and metal with crisp white spaces enveloped in light.
The solution developed by Heatherwick Studio was to carve galleries and a central circulation space from the silos’ cellular concrete structure to create an exceptionally spacious, cathedral‐like central atrium filled with light from an overhead glass roof. The architects have cut a cross‐section through eight of the central concrete tubes. The result will be an oval atrium surrounded by concrete shafts overhead and to the sides. Light streaming through the new glass roof will accentuate the roundness of the tubes. The chemistry of these intersecting geometries creates an extraordinary display of edges, achieved with advanced concrete cutting techniques. This atrium space will be used for monumental art commissions not seen in Africa until this construction.
The other silo bins will be carved away above ground level leaving the rounded exterior walls intact. Inside pristine white cubes will provide gallery spaces not only for the Zeitz MOCAA permanent collection, but also for international travelling exhibitions. Zeitz MOCAA will have 80 galleries, 18 education areas, a rooftop sculpture garden, a state of the art storage and conservation area, and Centres for Performative Practice, the Moving Image, Curatorial Excellence and Education. Heatherwick Studios have designed all the necessary amenities for a public institution of this scale including bookstores, a restaurant and bar, coffee shop, orientation rooms, a donors’ room, fellows’ room and various reading rooms. The extraordinary collection of old underground tunnels will be re‐engineered to create unusual education and site specific spaces for artists to dialogue with the original structure.
Cylindrical lifts rise inside bisected tubes and stairs spiral upwards like giant drill bits. The shafts are capped with strengthened glass that can be walked over, drawing light down into the building.
The monumental facades of the silos and the lower section of the tower are maintained without inserting new windows. The thick layers of render and paint are removed to reveal the raw beauty of the original concrete.
From the outside, the greatest visible change is the creation of special pillowed glazing panels, inserted into the existing geometry of the grain elevator’s upper floors, which bulge outward as if gently inflated. By night, this transforms the building’s upper storeys into a glowing lantern or beacon in the harbour.
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silos for Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront appeared first on Dezeen.
Portuguese studio CVDB Arquitectos has created a tapestry museum with vaulted ceilings, marble walls and funnel-shaped skylights inside a twelfth-century hospital building (photos by Fernando Guerra + slideshow).
The Tapestry Museum is located on the edge of a plaza in the small Portuguese town of Arraiolos, which is famed for the embroidered wool rugs and carpets that have been in production there since the Middle Ages.
CVDB Arquitectos planned the interior of the two-storey building so that galleries on both floors surround a double-height atrium with an arched ceiling.
Square windows offer views through into the galleries on the two long sides, while a single first-floor balcony at the far end offers a vantage point where visitors can survey the space.
A local marble combining shades of grey and white covers the atrium floor and continues through the rest of the ground-level spaces, occasionally wrapping up onto the walls.
“It’s a very local material,” architect Joana Barrelas told Dezeen. “Because we were refurbishing an existing building that is itself very noble, we wanted to use a material that has the same character.”
Vaulted ceilings added during the eighteenth century were retained and repaired in the galleries and multi-purpose spaces of this floor. Each have been painted white and feature decorative mouldings.
Marble staircase treads lead up from the atrium to the larger exhibition rooms on the top floor, where the floor surface switches to Brazilian oak that has been left unpainted to display natural yellow and pinkish hues.
“It’s a different noise as you walk over the first floor, rather than the ground floor,” added studio co-founder Diogo Burnay.
The roof and first-floor ceilings were completely restructured to create a series of funnel-shaped skylights, allowing light to filter evenly through each of the galleries.
Only one room maintains the old roof construction, which comprises a row of wooden trusses topped by a long narrow skylight.
Glazed doors reveal a first-floor terrace with a marble bench. From here, guests can look out over the town or down to a small courtyard just below.
The historic exterior of the building was restored and repainted, while a new staircase was added at the rear to allow tapestries to be easily transported in and out of the building.
Photography is by Fernando Guerra.
Scroll down to read text from CVDB Arquitectos:
Tapestry Museum in Arraiolos
The Tapestry Museum in Arraiolos occupies an existent building that once was Espírito Santo Hospital. The building is located in the main square of Arraiolos (Lima de Brito Square), a small town in Alentejo, Portugal. This public space streamlines the town’s social and cultural life. It gathers the Municipality and some commercial services. The Tapestry Museum contributes to consolidate the character of the square as qualified public space, in the urban tissue of Arraiolos.
The existent building congregates a diversity of interventions and transformations registered along its history. Some of its features needed to be preserved and integrated in the rehabilitation process. The project is based on the adaptation of a contemporary architectural language to the existent building, in order to guarantee a consistent exhibition path explaining the process of making Arraiolos’ Tapestries and their history.
The rehabilitation process was developed in compliance with functional programme requirements and technology demands. The programme is organised according to a central axis which contains the access and distribution areas. The central distribution space establishes the connection between the three main public areas of the building (temporary exhibition/multipurpose room on the ground floor; exhibition area on the first floor and education services on the ground floor).
This space is considered the core of the Tapestry Museum. The architectonic features of the space rely on its double-height and vaulted ceiling. The existence of window-like openings and passages allows a diversity of visual connections through the core to the surrounding areas.
In the ground floor of the building, the vaulted ceilings were preserved. In the multipurpose room the structural system was remade with metallic beams, according to a contemporary architectonic language.
The intervention in the first-floor ceilings was more comprehensive. All the roof area was replaced by a set of ceilings shaped as “inverted funnels” with a skylight on the top. The structure of the roof was maintained only in one room, characterised by a sequence of wood trusses topped by a long skylight.
There’s a new light over the old Espírito Santo Hospital, coming from the new Tapestry Museum, a building that enhances the cultural life of Arraiolos.
Location: Lima e Brito Square, Arraiolos, Portugal
Architecture: CVDB Arquitectos – Cristina Veríssimo and Diogo Burnay with Tiago Filipe Santos
Design team: Joana Barrelas, Rodolfo Reis, Ariadna Nieto, Ângelo Branquinho, Hugo Nascimento, Inês Carrapiço, José Maria Lavena, Laura Palma e Miguel Travesso.
Structure, foundations and services: AFA Consult
Landscape: F&C Arquitectura Paisagista
Rehabilitation consultant: Prof. Arq. José Aguiar
Client: Câmara Municipal de Arraiolos
Total cost: €1.000.000,00
Gross area: 1.200,00 sqm
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features marble walls and vaulted ceilings appeared first on Dezeen.
News: construction is set to begin later this year on a new six-storey home for Mexican design and architecture gallery Archivo, designed by emerging studio Zeller & Moye and overseen by Mexican architect and gallery founder Fernando Romero.
Conceived as a “raw exoskeleton” of splayed concrete floorplates, the new gallery in Mexico City will provide extensive exhibition and events space for Archivo, which was launched two years ago by FR-EE principal Fernando Romero to promote industrial design from the twentieth century up to the present.
Zeller & Moye planned the building as a stack of irregular floors that will project in different directions, creating a variety of indoor and outdoor spaces amongst the surrounding jungle-like greenery.
Staircases will spiral around the perimeter of the floors, connecting the various balconies and terraces, while transparent glass walls will be set back from the facade to enclose the spine of the structure.
“Our design for Archivo represents a new building typology in Mexico City,” said Christoph Zeller and Ingrid Moye, whose practice is based in both Mexico City and Berlin.
They continued: “The vertically stacked open floors full of life and activity connect the building with its surroundings, thereby challenging the trend for enclosed facades and stimulating an upcoming neighbourhood through culture and design.”
The new building will accommodate galleries for both permanent collections and temporary exhibitions, as well as a section dedicated to the history of Mexico City, a library, a restaurant and bar, and a number of workshop and events rooms.
Romero explained: “We are aiming to create the premier forum for contemporary design in Latin America, giving voice to young designers, creating dialogue and awareness about architecture and design in the region.”
“Building upon how we approach projects at FR-EE and in Archivo’s collaborative spirit, I wanted the new building to be designed in collaboration with other architects to create the ultimate platform and infrastructure around the collection’s activities,” he added.
Archivo will relocate to the new building from a space it has outgrown at the former home and studio of celebrated architect Luis Barragan.
“After two years, the thought of a new ground-up facility in which to create and design new shows is thrilling,” said gallery director Regina Pozo.
Green spaces surrounding the building will be open to the local community and are expected to be used for activities such as dance classes and urban gardening.
Here’s a project description from the design team:
Archivo by Zeller & Moye in collaboration with FR-EE
‘Archivo’ is a new space for Mexico City offering an exciting mixture of manifold programs, that aims to further enrich the cultural and social life of the metropolis.
Located in the heart of Mexico City, the new cultural hub is comprised of spaces for temporary exhibitions and a permanent collection of design pieces as well as room for educational and communal activities, social events and commercial use. ‘Archivo’ will attract both locals and first-time visitors, and will thus bring new life and regenerative energy into an undiscovered part of central Mexico City.
The building is designed as a raw exoskeleton that opens up to the surrounding jungle-like greenery. Like a tree, the open structure consists of vertical spines and floor plates that branch out horizontally to offer terraces at different levels with views into the green as well as over the city. Its six floors, orientated according to the irregular city grid, can be explored via a generous spiralled route that wraps along the building’s perimeter and meanders up through various functions at each level. Each function is partially located inside, with a portion situated on covered terraces in an unusual semi-open condition benefitting from Mexico’s year-long moderate climate.
Large open stairs connect the terraces, creating a continuous open territory that can be programmed and appropriated by its users as a stage, exhibition display, for social events or to meet and socialise. These activities animate the elevations of the building, clearly visible from the street, and from the inside of the park. The pure structure is completed by glazed facades set back from the slab edge to provide shade and privacy, whilst the more public functions occur along the active edges. A truly transparent and lively building is achieved that emanates outwards to the surrounding city.
‘Archivo diseño y arquitectura’ is an exclusive and vast collection of design items that will be displayed in open galleries enclosed only by glass in clear opposition to the traditional walled exhibition space. This open condition allows visitors to enjoy views into the exhibition areas both at a distance when approaching the building as well as when passing by more closely on the vertical public route. As the final destination point, a new “City Floor” is located on the building’s top level with a publicly accessible exhibition about the history and future of Mexico City against the backdrop of magnificent skyline views.
A wide spectrum of communal life forms an integral part of the project. Inside the green park-like terrain and immediately adjacent to the building, new multi-functional spaces for workshops, dance classes and socialising, as well as outdoor areas for urban gardening, serve as new destinations for the local community.
Project type: Open archive of a design collection and spaces for cultural programs
Project name: Archivo
Location: Mexico City
Architects: Zeller & Moye: Christoph Zeller, Ingrid Moye, Directors
Team: Omar G. Muñoz, Marielle Rivero Collaborators: FR-EE: Fernando Romero, Director
Program: Permanent & temporary exhibition spaces, library, multi-use space, workshops, commerce and offices
Status: In development
Size (m2 and ft2): 3,000 m2 / 32,300 ft2
Date: 2013 – 2016
Cost: USD $4,000,000
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to feature jutting floorplates appeared first on Dezeen.
Mexican architect Frida Escobedo has transformed the former home and studio of painter David Alfaro Siqueiros into a public gallery and encased the entire complex behind a triangulated concrete lattice (+ slideshow).
Young architect Frida Escobeda reworked the complex built in the 1960s by late artist and political activist Siqueiros as a mural painting workshop, creating an art gallery and artists’ residence in the small Mexican city of Cuernavaca.
A wall of perforated concrete blocks was build around the perimeter of the La Tallera de Siqueiros complex, forming an enclosure around the buildings that groups them together but also allows light to filter through.
Two large murals painted by Siqueiros were moved from their original positions around a private courtyard to frame a new entranceway – a move that Escobeda says was key in opening the complex up to the public.
“Rotating the murals ignites the symbolic elements of the facade’s architectural syntax, altering the typical relationship between gallery and visitor,” she said.
In their new positions, the murals provide a framework for the cafe and bookshop, but also help to separate the gallery building from the old house, which now functions as a base for artists in residence.
Siqueiros’s former workshop remains largely unchanged but had been coated with white paint to create a neutral gallery space. Extensions have been built from concrete, with an exposed surface that reveals the markings of its timber formwork.
La Tallera de Siqueiros was one of 14 architecture projects shortlisted for Designs of the Year 2014 earlier this week.
Photography is by Rafael Gamo.
Here’s a project description from Frida Escobedo:
La Tallera
La Tallera Siqueiros generates a relationship that reconciles a museum and a muralist’s workshop with the surrounding area by way of two simple strokes: opening the museum courtyard onto an adjacent plaza and rotating a series of murals from their original position. The space itself was built in 1965 and became the house and studio of the muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros during the final years of his life.
La Tallera is “an idea Diego Rivera and I came up with in the 1920s to create a real muralist workshop where new techniques in paint, materials, geometry, perspective and so on would be taught”. This is how Siqueiros himself defined this workplace, now a museum, workshop and artist’s residency program focused on art production and criticism. By opening up the courtyard, the museum yields a space for shared activity, while also appropriating the plaza.
The murals, originally intended for the outside area, now have a dual role: firstly, as a visual and programmatic link with the plaza by encompassing the public areas of the museum (café, bookshop and store) and secondly as a wall/program that separates the artist’s residence from the museum and workshop.
Rotating the murals ignites the symbolic elements of the facade’s architectural syntax, altering the typical relationship between gallery and visitor. Like the exterior, the gallery space, from both an exhibition design and artistic perspective, though unfolding, generates new relationships and spatial connections.
The distribution of these spaces and the interplay of planes – in murals and walls among others – is revealed in crossing a perimeter lattice that demarcates the urban surroundings – a single horizontal sculptural piece that contains and displays Siqueiros’ work.
Architect: Frida Escobedo
Design team: Frida Escobedo, Rodolfo Díaz Cervantes, Adrian Moreau, Adiranne Montemayor, Daniela Barrera, Fernando Cabrera, Luis Arturo García Castro
Client: Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros – La Tallera
Type: Public building / Museum Adaptation
Consulting: BulAu (Carlos Coronel / Hector de la Peña)
Building contractor: Francisco Alvarez Uribe (1st phase), Grupo Mexicano (2nd phase)
Construction Supervision: Fernando Cabrera, Javier Arreola, Frida Escobedo
Furniture design: Frida Escobedo
Total Floor Area: 2,890sqm
Budget: $2,240,000 USD
Invited competition, 1st. Place
Cuernavaca, Morelos
Mexico, 2012
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La Tallera gallery by Frida Escobedo appeared first on Dezeen.
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