Hasta La Ideas

Construction has begun on an aluminium-clad museum in Norway by Danish architecture studios COBE and Transform.

The Maritime Museum and Science Centre will be situated beside the river in the harbour town of Porsgrunn.

The roof of the two-storey building will be divided into square portions, all pitching in different directions.

A staircase at the centre of the museum will lead visitors up to a flexible first-floor exhibition hall, where the visible profile of the roof will suggest the location of possible partitions.

A central entrance hall leading to all other rooms will be located on the ground floor.

This isn’t the first time the two Danish firms have collaborated – see our earlier story about a competition-winning design for a cultural centre and library in Copenhagen.

Here’s some more information from COBE:

The Danish architecture offices COBE and TRANSFORM start construction of Porsgrunn’s new Maritime Museum and Science Center

Today the construction of the new Maritime Museum and Science Center starts in Porsgrunn in Norway. The building is designed by the Danish architecture offices COBE and TRANSFORM and conveys Norway’s trans- formation from a seafaring nation to a modern society based on knowledge industry. The new Maritime Museum and Science Center is expected to be completed already in autumn 2012.

A new landmark in Porsgrunn

The iconic character of the new Maritime Museum and its attractive location at the river close to the city center makes this new building a natural landmark for the city of Porsgrunn. Furthermore, the new museum building is the first step towards a big new master plan development for Porsgrunn City Center – also designed by COBE and TRANSFORM. The city of Porsgrunn has a long maritime history of shipping and the unique development of the region is clearly visible in the existing remarkable building structure of the area. The concept of the museum shows a high level of sensitivity towards the existing small buildings yet simultaneously stands out as a contemporary public building.

Lars Bendrup, director at TRANSFORM, says: ”The new Maritime Museum and Science Center starts up an important process to turn the back of the city to the front. In the future, the city of Porsgrunn will be oriented towards the river. The signaling effect will therefore be crucial to the city’s new situation”.

9 building volumes with pitched roofs

Taking into account the surrounding building structure, the new building is composed of 9 smaller building volumes with tilted and pitched roofs that are assembled into a larger building unit. A characteristic aluminum façade outlines the shape of the building and provides a vivid impression by reflecting the lights and colors of the surrounding landscape.

All public functions of the building are situated on the ground floor and have direct access to the outdoor areas including the new promenade towards the river. The central entrance area is the building’s main room from where all other rooms are distributed. This multifunctional space is defined by a central characteristic staircase that folds down from above and invites visitors upstairs to the large, enclosed exhibition area. Here various room heights and a distinct ceiling line emphasizes an airy and continuous space. The exhibition space is composed as an open flexible space, gently subdi- vided by the roof into 9 different spatial experiences. The 9 spatialities can be separated or combined thereby providing a sound functional setting for small and large exhibitions.
Dan Stubbergaard, owner of COBE, says: “The new Maritime Museum and Science Center balances between contextual adaptation and modernity.The interpretation of the context’s pitched roofs and small building volumes create the frames for a unique intenior with varying, vivid spatialities.”

The project is done in collaboration with the engineering firm Sweco and is expected to be completed in autumn 2012.

This writer has returned from vacation and though we apologize for not bringing you back trinkets and souvenirs from our travels, we come baring the gift of news. First, a couple of pieces about museum openings. This Friday marks the greatly anticipated first days the public will have to enter the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, home to the massive museum’s founder and heir to the Walmart fortune, Alice Walton. On Friday, Walton will be leading the dedication, along with the museum’s executive director, Don Bacigalupi and the designer behind the project, the renowned starchtect Moshe Safdie. Former President Clinton will also be appearing by video to say hello and kick off the opening. However, unless you acted quickly, even though the museum is miles away from what we city folk would call “civilization,” the museum’s first day is already booked solid.

In other starchitect-designed museum news, the Lansing State Journal has received word that the Zaha Hadid-designed Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum on the campus of Michigan State University is nearing competition with its construction. As of now, the paper reports that it should all be wrapped and largely completed by February, with an official opening now scheduled for some time in late April. Certainly good news for a museum that, like many across the country over the past few years, was struggling to pull in those last few million to finish everything up.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Home to the Temple of Dendur, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Sackler Wing was added as part of Kevin Roche’s masterplan for the museum.

Don’t miss “Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment.” On view through January 22 at the Museum of the City of New York (following its debut earlier this year at the Yale School of Architecture), it’s the first retrospective exhibition of the Pritzker Prize winner’s work, which includes the Ford Foundation Building, the master plan and extension of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Oakland Museum in California, and the Union Carbide World Corporate Headquarters in Danbury, Connecticut. The museum is also offering three unique opportunities to get up close and personal with the Dublin-born principal of Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates.

The architectural fun begins next Tuesday evening, as speakers Todd DeGarmo (CEO STUDIOS Architecture), Belmont Freeman (Belmont Freeman Architects), and critic Alexandra Lange consider Roche’s work from the inside out, by focusing on his innovative corporate office interiors for the likes of John Deere and Company. On December 6, Roche himself will be on hand to chat with Morrison Heckscher, chairman of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, about the design, realization, and reception of Roche’s plan for the museum. The architect returns on January 10 to tackle the topic of “The Limitations of Modernism: Classical Forms in the Buildings of Kevin Roche” in the company of curators Donald Albrecht and Kyle Johnson as well as Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen, an associate professor at the Yale School of Architecture. UnBeige readers can save 50% off the regular ticket price of $12: use code Roche2011 when ordering here.

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“Just look at the paintings and relax.” Better yet, laugh. Such is the advice of Joe Queenan, whose latest Wall Street Journal column takes the form of “three tips for surviving the art museum.” His first rule? Avoid the acoustiguide. “Art phones have turned museum-going into a dreary chore,” writes Queenan, who we suspect didn’t opt for the experience-enhancing headphones at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s recent Alexander McQueen blockbuster. “It’s like being back in high school, where you’re expected to memorize everything.” He’s also no fan of docents, who he describes as “blathering idiots who think they missed their calling as stand-ups” and “living proof that people should not be allowed to retire, because in retirement, the pathologically garrulous cease to be merely annoying and become truly dangerous.” (We’ll spare you the bit about dispatching NATO warplanes on a docent destruction mission.) Focus on his third tip: Don’t be afraid to laugh at the art. “If an art museum is clicking on all cylinders, you shouldn’t be able to get out of there without doubling over in laughter at least three times,” writes Queenan, who offers examples ranging from Francois Boucher‘s toddler hunters to comtemporary works. “If you can’t laugh at Anthony van Dyck’s boozed-up cavaliers, Thomas Gainsborough’s cadaverous, blue-faced debutantes, or Damien Hirst’s 13-foot shark in a few thousand gallons of formaldehyde, you’re really missing out on some great fun.”

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“[Alessandro] Mendini provides a spine through the whole show. That chair is a really fantastic thing. This is him working with Studio Alchimia, which is just before Memphis starts—it’s a more avant-garde, nihilistic design collective than Memphis, but provides some of the inspiration for it. And that particular chair is typical of his practice at this time. Mendini called it “redesign”—he was making new objects from quoted material from lots of different sources. It’s a wood-frame chair with white upholstery, and Mendini projected a slide onto it and painted it to match. The title is a reference to this idea of memory—Baroque furniture, pointillism. It’s very layered and quite witty but not particularly functional.”

–Glenn Adamson, co-curator of “Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990” at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, on Alessandro Mendini’s “Proust” chair (pictured) in an interview-cum-exhibition tour with Marc Kristal on Dwell.com

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