Hasta La Ideas

Norwegian architects Snøhetta have unveiled their design for an extension to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), which will double the gallery’s exhibition and education spaces.

A glass-fronted gallery along Howard Street will create a new entrance to the museum on a part of the site currently occupied by a fire station.

From here a five metre-wide pathway will lead up a set of stairs and across a public square towards Natoma Street.

The new buildings will be over 15 metres taller than the existing SFMOMA building, which was completed by architect Mario Botta in 1995.

Read more about Snøhetta’s competition-winning entry in our earlier story on Dezeen Wire.

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Here are some more details from the press release:

SFMOMA unveils preliminary designs for its expansion

Expansion Will Double Exhibition and Education Space

Design Transforms SFMOMA and Neighbourhood
Opening New Routes of Public Circulation and Access
With New Entry and Pedestrian Promenade

May 25, 2011—The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) today unveiled the preliminary design for its expansion that will double the museum’s exhibition and education space while enhancing the visitor experience and more deeply weaving the museum into the fabric of the city. The new building will both transform the museum and enliven the city by opening up new routes of public circulation around the neighbourhood and into the museum. Completion is projected in 2016.

Developed by architectural firm Snøhetta in collaboration with SFMOMA and EHDD of San Francisco, the over 225,000-square-foot expansion will run contiguously along the back of the current building and extend from Howard to Minna streets, allowing for the seamless integration of the two structures. The new building will provide SFMOMA with a greater public profile and an openness that will welcome visitors and project the museum’s role as a catalyst for new ideas, a center for learning, and a place that provides great art experiences for Bay Area residents and visitors.

On its east side, the building will feature a sweeping façade and an entrance in an area that is currently hidden from public view and largely unused. This will be achieved through the creation of a mid-block, open-air, 18-foot-wide pedestrian promenade running from Howard Street through to Natoma Street that will open a new route of public circulation through the neighbourhood and bring Natoma Street, currently a dead end, to life. The public promenade will feature a series of stairs and landings terracing up to an entry court that extends from the new east entrance, providing additional public spaces.

The building also introduces a façade on Howard Street that will feature a large, street-level gallery enclosed in glass on three sides, providing views of both the art in the galleries and the new public spaces. At this time, the museum is also exploring the creation of a number of outdoor terraces, including one on top of its current building. The Snøhetta building will rise fifty feet higher than the Botta building, and its roofline will be sculpted to frame the skyline of the buildings beyond it to the east when viewed from Yerba Buena Gardens. The new entrance will be accessible from both Howard and Natoma streets and will align with the new Transbay Transit Center being built two blocks east of the museum. This entry will complement SFMOMA’s current Third Street entrance, which will be revitalised to enhance visitor flow and access.

On Howard Street, the glass-enclosed gallery and pedestrian promenade will be located on a site currently occupied by Fire House 1 and its neighbor at 670 Howard Street. SFMOMA is designing, financing, and constructing a new, replacement fire station on nearby Folsom Street, representing a gift to the city of more than $10 million, that will provide the Fire Department with a state-of-the-art facility that will enhance emergency response time.

The planning of the expansion continues as an intensive collaborative process of museum leadership, trustees, visitors, other stakeholders, and the design team. The design of the interior spaces and integration of the two buildings will be unveiled at the end of this year.

Says SFMOMA Director Neal Benezra, “This is a transformative design for the museum, the neighbourhood, and the city. The new resources we are creating for SFMOMA are a response to the incredible growth of our audiences over the past 15 years and increased public demand for the museum’s programming. The welcoming and luminous character of Snøhetta’s design and its embrace of the surrounding neighbourhood further SFMOMA’s role as a center for learning, interaction, and inspiration for the people of San Francisco and the region.”

“Our design for SFMOMA responds to the unique demands of this site, as well as the physical and urban terrain of San Francisco,” says Snøhetta principal architect Craig Dykers. “The scale of the building meets the museum’s mission, and our approach to the neighbourhood strengthens SFMOMA’s engagement with the city. Pedestrian routes will enliven the streets surrounding the museum and create a procession of stairs and platforms leading up to the new building, echoing the network of paths, stairways, and terracing that is a trademark of the city.”

SFMOMA has raised more than $250 million toward a projected $480 million campaign goal for the expansion, including $100 million for the museum’s endowment. The project also encompasses an expansion of the permanent collection, which forms the foundation of the museum’s programming. This past February, SFMOMA launched a multiyear campaign to further strengthen the collection, which has more than doubled in size to 27,000 works since the museum moved to its current home in 1995. In September 2009, the museum also announced that the Fisher family would share its renowned collection of contemporary art with the public at SFMOMA. The museum holds one of the foremost collections of contemporary art in the world and the leading collection of modern and contemporary art on the West Coast.

SFMOMA first announced plans to expand its building in April 2009, spurred by growth since it moved to Third Street in 1995. The move catalyzed incredible growth in the museum’s audiences, educational programs, exhibitions, and collections. Over the past 15 years, SFMOMA’s annual average attendance has more than tripled to some 700,000, membership has grown to 40,000. SFMOMA has also developed one of the strongest exhibition programs in the world, organising groundbreaking shows that travel internationally, including recent surveys of the work of Diane Arbus, Olafur Eliasson, Eva Hesse, Frida Kahlo, William Kentridge, Sol LeWitt, Richard Tuttle, and Jeff Wall.

Snøhetta on SFMOMA
In describing the design concept, Craig Dykers stated:

SFMOMA sparked the dramatic transformation of San Francisco’s South of Market district when it transformed a run-down neighborhood into a cultural anchor for the city in 1995. After 15 years on Third Street, SFMOMA is now further invigorating the city by opening up a place that has been out of sight and out of mind.

SFMOMA’s expansion will enliven the neighbourhood through a generous plan that frees connections between well-known surrounding streets and more hidden urban spaces. The building will encourage people to enjoy the intimate small streets as much as the heavily used thoroughfares of the district. The new building does not push tightly against its property lines; instead it creates new public spaces and pedestrian routes through the neighbourhood along with open views of the surrounding streetscape. By organising the complex configuration of the museum’s expansion site into a unified whole, the new SFMOMA will promote connections to portions of the city that are already becoming more publicly accessible with the construction of the new Transbay Transit Center. Having been a partner to the creation of the cultural hub around Yerba Buena Gardens, SFMOMA will now further enliven the entire neighbourhood as an urban destination.

Formally, the new SFMOMA is designed to engage with the skyline that surrounds it. Its sculptural identity is found in a formal language that embraces and invites the silhouettes of its neighbours to participate in the dialogue of the new urban identity of South of Market. SFMOMA’s new, low slung shape will create a horizon in the skyline that connects rather than segregates the different parts of the city that border it.

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Opera House Oslo by Snøhetta	Petter Dass Museum by Snøhetta	MAXXI by Zaha Hadid

The Hepworth Wakefield gallery designed by David Chipperfield Architects opens to the public this Saturday.

With 10 naturally-lit exhibition rooms, the gallery in Yorkshire is the largest purpose-built space for art in the UK and will display over 40 works by sculptor Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975), who lived locally.

The building is composed of a grouping of trapezoidal blocks and also contains learning studios, an auditorium, an archive, and a café and shop.

The gallery is accessed via a new pedestrian bridge across the River Calder, next to which the building is situated.

Photography is by Iwan Bann.

See all of our stories about David Chipperfield on Dezeen »

Below is the full press release:

The Hepworth Wakefield confirms Yorkshire as a centre for sculpture

The Hepworth Wakefield, designed by David Chipperfield Architects, opens to the public on Saturday 21 May 2011, putting the spotlight on Yorkshire as a world centre for sculpture, together with Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Henry Moore Institute and Leeds Art Gallery.

Named after Barbara Hepworth, who was born in Wakefield in 1903 and lived there with her family until the age of 18, with 5,000 square metres of gallery space, The Hepworth Wakefield is the largest purpose-built art gallery to open in Britain since the Hayward on London’s Southbank in 1968, and provides a permanent public legacy for the artist in her home city.

The gallery site has been developed at a cost of £35 million as part of the £100 million regeneration of Waterfront Wakefield. It includes the restoration of former mill and warehouse buildings, the development of new residential, office and leisure facilities, and outdoor landscaping with a new pedestrian bridge. The gallery is funded by founding partners Wakefield Council and The Hepworth Estate; major funders Arts Council England and Heritage Lottery Fund with additional funding from European Regional Development Fund, Homes and Communities Agency and Yorkshire Forward.

The highlight of The Hepworth Wakefield’s permanent collection is a group of over forty works given by her family that provides a unique insight into Barbara Hepworth’s working methods and creativity. The Hepworth Family Gift, donated through a special scheme facilitated by the Art Fund, comprises a unique collection of prototypes and models in plaster, aluminium and wood, from which casts were made in bronze or aluminium at the foundry. The majority are original plasters on which Hepworth worked with her own hands. Shown alongside the plasters will be tools and materials from Hepworth’s studio. The installation, spread over two dedicated gallery spaces, includes the full-size prototype made by Hepworth of perhaps one of her best- known sculptures, Winged Figure, commissioned for the John Lewis Partnership building in Oxford Street London and installed in 1963.

The Hepworth Wakefield has forged partnerships with the nation’s leading arts organisations including Tate, the Arts Council Collection and the British Council, to secure a programme of key loans that put the focus on Wakefield and Yorkshire as a centre for modern and contemporary art. The opening displays include works such as Danaïde by Constantin Brancusi c. 1918 and Composition C (No.III) with Red, Yellow and Blue by Piet Mondrian, 1935 from the Tate; The Snowstorm: Spiral Motif in Black and White by Victor Pasmore, 1950-51 from the Arts Council Collection; 1935 (white relief) by Ben Nicholson from the British Council Collection and J.M.W. Turner’s Wakefield Bridge (c.1798) from the British Museum.

The city’s own collection, including over 6,000 works, built up over 80 years, includes important works by Barbara Hepworth and Yorkshire’s other internationally celebrated artist, Henry Moore, alongside pieces by other leading British artists including David Bomberg, Harold Gilman, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, Ben Nicholson, William Scott, Patrick Heron and Lucie Rie. The opening displays concentrate on Barbara Hepworth, placing her work in a local, national and international context.

Complementing the collection displays, The Hepworth Wakefield will present an ambitious programme of temporary exhibitions. The inaugural exhibition Hot Touch will present the work of internationally acclaimed sculptor, Eva Rothschild, running from 21 May – 9 October 2011 and will feature over 16 new works created by the artist specifically for the gallery spaces. It will be Rothschild’s first major solo show in a UK public gallery for four years.

The Hepworth Wakefield, set in the historic waterfront area of Wakefield on a landmark site on the banks of the River Calder, has been designed by the internationally acclaimed David Chipperfield Architects. Spread over 5,000 square metres, the visitor can explore 10 light-filled galleries and learning studios; an auditorium; an archive; café and shop with an outdoor terrace and gardens. These can all be accessed via a new pedestrian bridge over the River Calder, leading to The Hepworth Wakefield.

The opening of The Hepworth Wakefield is a highlight of Art in Yorkshire, a region-wide project supported by Tate. This year-long celebration of the visual arts across 19 galleries in Yorkshire is led by York Museums Trust in association with Arts Council England, MLA and Welcome to Yorkshire.

Councillor Peter Box, Leader, Wakefield Council:
“I passionately believe that the opening of the Hepworth Wakefield will lead to real benefits to our community, encouraging more investment in the future of our city and placing Wakefield on the world stage as a major centre for visitors from all over the country and abroad.”

Simon Wallis, Director, The Hepworth Wakefield, said:
“This is a moment to savour for so many people who have worked together over the last decade to see the dream of the Hepworth Wakefield realised. We are proud to present the work of Barbara Hepworth, a daughter of this city, in this superbly designed gallery and to develop an international centre for the visual arts, which will attract artists and visitors from all over the world.”

Alan Davey, Chief Executive, Arts Council England, said:
“The Arts Council is proud to be a major supporter of The Hepworth Wakefield, investing £5.5 million of National Lottery funds to help create this world-class gallery. We are delighted that they will also be funded as part of our national portfolio from 2012 -15.

The opening is one of the cultural highlights of 2011 and will cement the increasing national and international profile of Yorkshire as a centre for the presentation and understanding of sculpture. We hope that the gallery, like the ground-breaking work of Barbara Hepworth, will inspire visitors from far and wide and become a creative centre for the people and communities of Wakefield and beyond”.

Dr Sophie Bowness, granddaughter of Barbara Hepworth, said:
“On behalf of our family, I would like to thank all those who have contributed to making this remarkable gallery a reality. Our gift is a unique group of Barbara Hepworth’s surviving prototypes, the majority in plaster, from which editions of bronzes were cast, and we hope it will greatly enhance understanding of her working methods. We have found the ideal home for the plasters in Wakefield, the city in which Barbara was born and grew up. We would particularly like to thank the Art Fund, through whom we have made this gift.”

Dame Jenny Abramsky, Chair of the Heritage Lottery Fund said: “Barbara Hepworth’s sculptures have left a legacy of artistic genius which continues to inspire us well into the 21st century. The opening of this much-anticipated gallery, funded with a £5m Heritage Lottery Fund grant, will be a fitting celebration of Hepworth’s life and work as well as putting her home town of Wakefield on the cultural tourist map.”
Sir Nicholas Serota, Director of Tate said:
“The Hepworth Wakefield is one of the most exciting and beautiful galleries in the United Kingdom. Its opening in May 2011 will bring tens of thousands of people to Wakefield, similarly to when Tate Modern opened, which brought hundreds of thousands of people to London. I think The Hepworth is a great building and it will offer a wonderful day out for people to come and experience Wakefield in a new way.”

Antony Gormley, artist said:
“The Hepworth Wakefield will become a place of pilgrimage for all lovers of sculpture and now with the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds and Yorkshire Sculpture Park in West Bretton, Yorkshire will be a place of inspiration for all.”

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Turner Contemporary by David Chipperfield	Museum Folkwang by David Chipperfield	Liangzhu Culture Museum by David Chipperfield

Architectural photographer Nelson Garrido has sent us these photographs of a museum with a carved stone facade in the Côa Valley, Portugal, designed by Portuguese architects Camilo Rebelo and Tiago Pimentel.

Located on a world heritage site with impressive mountain scenery, Museu de Foz Coa displays local Paleolithic art.

The interior walls of the museum are of exposed concrete, with light reflected around the spaces by triangular mirrors.

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Here is some more information from the architects:

The Museum of Art and Archaeology of the Côa Valley, by Camilo Rebelo and Tiago Pimentel, two young Portuguese architects, was built to hold and promote Paleolithic art discovers in Côa Valley.

Being perhaps man’s first land art manifestation, Côa engravings were classified as World Heritage Site in December 1998.

The Museum design concept starts with the idea of conceiving a museum as an “installation on the landscape”.

Like a “stone carved in the landscape” with a monolithic triangular shape which results directly from the valley’s confluences, the building resembles an aircraft carrier.

The museum entrance platform was conceived as a contemplation moment of the awesome and impressive scenery of mountains, valleys and Douro and Côa rivers.

In the interior spaces the architects further developed the concept of “carved stone” creating pathways and spaces that evokes the ambience and intimacy of caves in which light and possible visual relations with the outside appear in a timely and unexpected way.

The joint between the concrete and the local stone’s texture and color, using concrete made with shale pigment of local stone, was the solution found to materialize the concept of “stone carved in the landscape” giving the museum building the expression of a rock which is integrated and makes itself part of the landscape.

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Lille Métropole Musée by Manuelle Gautrand	Mimesis Museum by Siza, Castanheira & Kim	Liangzhu Culture Museum by David Chipperfield

Dutch studio MVRDV have won a design competition to build a Comic and Animation Museum in Hangzhou, China, formed of eight giant balloon-shaped forms.

Each balloon will contain a different function within the museum, including two exhibition spaces that will display cartoons, comics and animations.

The permanent exhibition space will spiral out of its chamber and on through the building to connect with three auditoriums and a comic book library.

Where balloons touch an opening is created internally, allowing views between spaces.

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Here are some more details from the architects:

MVRDV win competition for China Comic and Animation Museum, Hangzhou

Hangzhou urban planning bureau has announced MVRDV winner of the international design competition for the China Comic and Animation Museum (CCAM) in Hangzhou, China. MVRDV won with a design referring to the speech balloon: a series of eight balloon shaped volumes create an internally complex museum experience of in total 30.000m2.

Part of the project is also a series of parks on islands, a public plaza and a 13.000m2 expo centre. Construction start is envisioned for 2012, the total budget is 92 million Euro.

Comics and animations have long been considered a form of entertainment for the younger generations but develop more and more into a sophisticated art form. The initiative for a museum especially for this relatively recent art form creates a platform which will unite the worlds of art and entertainment. By using one of the cartoon’s prime characteristics – the speech balloon – the building will instantly be recognised as place for cartoons, comics and animations. The neutral speech balloon becomes 3d.

The 30.000m2 are distributed over eight volumes which are interconnected allowing for a circular tour of the entire program. Services such as the lobby, education, three theatres/cinemas with in total 1111 seats and a comic book library occupy each their own balloon. If two balloons touch in the interior a large opening allows access and views in-between the volumes. The balloon shape allows for versatile exhibitions, the permanent collection is presented in a chronological spiral whereas the temporary exhibition hall offers total flexibility. Amsterdam based exhibition architects Kossman deJong tested the spaces and designed exhibition configurations which appeal to different age groups and allow large crowds to visit the exhibition.

One of the balloons is devoted to interactive experience in which visitors can actively experiment with all sorts of animation techniques like blue screen, stop motion, drawing, creating emotions etc. The core attraction of this space is a gigantic 3D zoetrope. The routing of the museum permits short or long visits, visits to the cinema, the temporary exhibition or the roof terrace restaurant. The façade of the museum is covered in a cartoon relief referring to a Chinese vase. The monochrome white concrete façade allows the speech balloons to function: texts can be projected onto the façade. The relief was designed in collaboration with Amsterdam based graphic designers JongeMeesters.

Most of the 13.7 ha site is occupied by a new park on a series of islands in White Horse Lake. Reed beds are used to improve the water quality. Boat rides offer an added attraction. A separate expo building of 25.000m2 will house large fairs and the annual China International Comic and Animation Festival (CICAF). In-between expo and CCAM a public plaza will be the centre of this festival which is the county’s largest cartoon and animation event and has been held annually in Hangzhou since 2005.

Hangzhou is a metropolis with 6.4 million inhabitants 180 km southwest of Shanghai. The Museum will become a new focal point on the less populated southern side of Qiantang river. The CCAM will consolidate the city’s leading position as China’s capital of the animation industry. The new Museum will be the icon of a larger development, the Comic and Animation Centre. It comprises a series of hill-shaped buildings containing offices, a hotel and a conference centre of which the first phase is close to completion.

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Rotterdam Market Hall by MVRDV	Gwanggyo Power Centre by MVRDV	House of Culture by MVRDV

Danish architects Bjarke Ingels Group have won a competition to design the new National Gallery of Greenland in the country’s capital city, Nuuk.

The building will form a ring round a central glazed courtyard.

Its roofline and internal paths will follow the shape of the sloping site, which overlooks a fjord.

The gallery will display both historical and contemporary art.

BIG won the commission in collaboration with local firms TNT Nuuk, Ramboll Nuuk and Inge Bisgaard of Arkitekti.

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The information that follows is from BIG:

BIG WINS THE COMPETITION TO DESIGN GREENLAND’S NEW NATIONAL GALLERY

BIG + TNT Nuuk + Ramboll Nuuk + Arkitekti is the winning team to design the new National Gallery of Greenland in the country’s capital Nuuk, among invited proposals totaling 6 Nordic architects.

Located on a steep slope overlooking the most beautiful of Greenland’s fjords, the 3000 m2 National Gallery will serve as a cultural and architectural icon for the people of Greenland.

The new museum will combine historical and contemporary art of the country in one dynamic institution.

The winning proposal was selected by a unanimous museum board among 6 proposals, including Norwegian Snøhetta, Finnish Heikkinen‐Komonen, Islandic Studio Granda and Greenlandic Tegnestuen Nuuk.

“The Board has a clear vision: to work for the establishment of an internationally oriented highly professional institution that communicates the continuous project of documenting and developing the Greenlandic national identity through art and culture.

Our dream is a national gallery where historic and contemporary art meets circumpolar pieces, Nordic and world art in general.

Our dream is an institution that stimulates our curiosity, awake our excitement with its thought‐provoking design and where we all feel at home.

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Selecting a prominent architect as BIG, I am sure that our chances of realizing that dream are good”, Tuusi Josef Motzfeldt, Greenland’s National Gallery of Art.

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As a projection of a geometrically perfect circle on to the steep slope, the new gallery is conceived as a courtyard building that combines a pure geometrical layout with a sensitive adaption to the landscape.

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The three‐dimensional imprint of the landscape creates a protective ring around the museum’s focal point, the sculpture garden where visitors, personnel, exhibition merge with culture and nature, inside and outside.

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“The Danish functionalistic architecture in Nuuk is typically square boxes which ignore the unique nature of Greenland.

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We therefore propose a national gallery which is both physically and visually in harmony with the dramatic nature, just like life in Greenland is a symbiosis of the nature.

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We have created a simple, functional and symbolic shape, where the perfect circle is supplied by the local topography which creates a unique hybrid between the abstract shape and the specific location”, Bjarke Ingels, Founder and Partner, BIG.

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The slope opens up the sculpture garden towards the city and the view, framing both the sculpture garden and museum functions.

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A rough looking external façade of white concrete will patinate over time and adjust to the local weather, while the circular inner glass façade will consist of a simple and refined frame which contrasts the rough nature and compliments the beautiful view.

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” The building will with its simplistic coarseness and harmony with the landscape become a symbol of the current independent Greenlandic artistic and architectural expression.”, Andreas Klok Pedersen, Partner & Project Leader, BIG.

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The circular shape of the gallery enables a flexible division of the exhibition into different shapes and sizes, creating a unique framework for the museum’s art.

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Visitor access to the exhibition happens through a covered opening created by a slight lift in the façade into a lobby with a 180 degree panorama view towards the sculpture garden and the fjord as well as access to the common museum functions, including ticket counters, wardrobe, boutique and a café.

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The new gallery will create more activity at the waterfront by attracting the whole area is interconnected by a path which like the museum, forms after the shifting inclinations of the terrain.

The locals and visitors will be able to admire the clear shape of the gallery which appears as a sculpture or a piece of land‐art.

“Greenland National Gallery for Art will play a significant role for the citizens of Greenland and the inhabitants of Nuuk as a cultural, social, political, urban and architectural focal point that opens towards the city and the world through its perfect circular geometry and shape”, Bjarke Ingels, Stifter & Partner, BIG.

PROJECT: Greenland National Gallery
CLIENT: Nunatta Eqqumiitsulianik Saqqummersitsivia

SIZE: 3000 m2
LOCATION: Nuuk, Greenland

COLLABORATION: TNT Nuuk, Rambøll Nuuk, Arkitekti, MIR, Glessner Group
PARTNER IN CHARGE: Bjarke Ingels, Andreas Pedersen

PROJECT LEADER: Jakob Henke
TEAM: Daniel Selensky, Ji –young Yoon, Gul Ertekin, Aleksander Tokarz, Alessio Zenaro, Johan Cool Nicklas Antoni Rasch

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Waste-to-Energy Plant by BIG	West 57th by BIG	Danish Pavilion at Shanghai Expo 2010 by BIG