Hasta La Ideas

News: here’s a preview of the nearly completed Pérez Art Museum Miami by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, which opens tomorrow in downtown Miami and which suggests a new “kind of vernacular” for the city, according to Jacques Herzog (+ slideshow + photography is by Iwan Baan).

Taking over from the former Miami Art Museum, PAMM accommodates 3000 square-metres of galleries within a sprawling three-storey complex that features a huge elevated veranda, boxy concrete structures and large expanses of glazing.

Herzog & de Meuron designed the building to suit the tropical climate of Miami. The veranda, which in time will be filled with plants, is raised up on stilts to surround the building, creating an intermediate space between the galleries and the surrounding city.

“This building is just like a shelter,” said Jacques Herzog. “A roof just like the floor we stand on, under which volumes are assembled to collect, to expose and to show art.”

“Miami doesn’t have any local vernacular,” Herzog said on a tour of the building earlier today, explaining how he wanted to avoid recreating the “decorated boxes” of Miami’s iconic Art Deco District.

“It looks nice and it’s associated with Miami,” he said of the art deco buildings. “But in fact Miami doesn’t have any local vernacular. It has something that the tourists especially like which is this art deco style. This [the Pérez Art Museum Miami] is somehow deconstructing that. It’s the opposite: it’s not based on the box, it’s based on permeability.”

Herzog compared the architectural approach to the Miami building to Herzog & de Meuron’s barn-like Parrish Art Museum on Long Island, which was completed last year.

“As much as the Parrish is an answer to this more northern exposure and is a totally different typology, this is an answer for here, sitting on stilts, with the floods, with the shading, and especially the plants.”

“I think something that could become a kind of vernacular is a building that is specific for this place,” he continued, comparing architecture to cooking.

“The ingredients here are the climate, the vegetation, the water, the sun. The building should respond to all these things,” he said. “Like cooking in winter is different to cooking in summer because you don’t have the same ingredients so you shouldn’t make things that make sense in summer, in winter.”

Stilts support the base of the veranda, then turn into columns to support an overhanging roof that shelters both indoor and outdoor spaces. Clusters of suspended columns covered in vertical gardens by botanist Patrick Blanc hang from the roof structure.

“There’s a very thin layer between the inside and the outside,” added Herzog. “As soon as there are more plants, this will help to make that more accessible, and not such a shock.”

The interior is complete and the exhibitions are installed; when Dezeen visited earlier today contractors were still finalising the landscaping around the building and installing the vertical gardens.

A permanent collection featuring artworks from the museum’s 1800-piece collection occupy the two lower levels of the building. Special exhibitions will also be accommodated on the first floor, while the uppermost level is dedicated to education facilities.

PAMM opens with the first major international exhibition of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, alongside shows dedicated to Cuban painter Amelia Peláez and Haitian-born artist Edouard Duval-Carrié.

The building is located beside a motorway near Biscayne Bay and is the first completed museum of a waterfront complex that will also be home to the Grimshaw-designed Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science when it opens in 2015.

Photography is by Iwan Baan.

Here’s the transcript of Herzog talking about the building at this morning’s press tour:

“Since the early 90s I have been coming [to Miami] with my wife, long before we knew we were going to be building and we were shocked about what is vernacular here: the decorated box. There’s this climate and this reputation, this didn’t make sense, but of course it looks nice and it’s associated with Miami.

“But in fact Miami doesn’t have any local vernacular. It has something that the tourists especially like which is this art deco style. This [the Pérez Art Museum Miami] is somehow deconstructing that, it’s the opposite, it’s not based on the box, it’s based on permeability. Also this transparency with water, vegetation, garden, city and art. Art is intertwined with all these elements.

“In some ways I think this is really interesting because we are here at a crossroads between south and north: South America and North America and other parts. We, with this Eurocentric, America-centric view, didn’t have any focus until not so long ago. The building should help make that possible. This building is just like a shelter, a roof just like the floor we stand on, under which volumes are assembled to collect, to expose and to show art.

“What makes it local? I think thats it’s local because, if we compare it with cooking, the ingredients here are really the climate, the vegetation, the water, the sun. The building should respond to all these things. This sounds simple and it is simple but it’s not easy to achieve, to not make it so boring and generic.

“It is I think something that could become a kind of vernacular, a typical building, a specific building for this place. Just like the Parrish [Art Museum] in the north, which recently opened. We’ve done other museums, the Tate Modern, that answer to what is already there. Like cooking in winter is different in summer, because you don’t have the same ingredients so you shouldn’t make things that make sense in summer, in winter. As much as the Parrish is an answer to this more northern exposure and is a totally different typology, this is an answer for here, sitting on stilts, above the floods, with the shading, and especially the plants.

“We’re very happy to have a Patrick Blanc working on this. Because when we saw the old museum, and you come into the museum over this very hot plaza, and there is a black glass door and that says this is outside and that is inside, it’s like boom! Such a shock, because what it gives way to is an air-conditioned, climatically-controlled box with a very thin layer between the inside and the outside.

“The plants here should be like a filter to make the transition between inside and outside. As soon as there are more plants, this will help to make that more accessible, and not such a shock.”

Here’s a detailed description of the design from the museum:

Pérez Art Museum Miami

Designed by Herzog & de Meuron, the new Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) reflects the natural and urban landscape of Miami and responds to the city’s rapid growth as a cultural destination. The new facility borders the MacArthur Causeway with its front façade oriented toward the bay, making it a highly visible landmark amid Miami’s cityscape. PAMM includes 32,000 square feet of galleries as well as education facilities, a shop, waterfront café, and exterior plazas and gardens.

The new building supports the institution’s mission to serve local populations as a dynamic social forum, stimulating collection growth and enabling the Museum to better fulfill its role as the principal contemporary visual arts and educational resource in the region.

The Building and Landscaping

The three-story facility includes 200,000 square feet of programmable space, comprised of 120,000 square feet of interior space―a three-fold increase from the Museum’s previous facility―and 80,000 square feet on the exterior. PAMM sits upon an elevated platform and below a canopy, both of which extend far beyond the Museum’s walls creating a shaded veranda. Open to light and fresh air, surface parking will be located beneath the platform and surrounded by landscaping and terraces. Stairs as wide as the plot connect the platform to the bay and a waterfront promenade, creating a continuous, open civic space that conjoins community, nature, architecture, and contemporary art.

Designed by artist and botanist Patrick Blanc using his advanced horticultural techniques, native tropical plants hang from the canopy between the structural columns and platforms. The project team also worked closely with landscape architects Arquitectonica Geo to select a range of plant life that could withstand exposure to sun and wind as well as the city’s storm season. The platform provides a comfortable outdoor temperature by natural means. The intermediate space has the ecological benefit of minimizing the sun’s impact on the building’s envelope and reducing the cost of controlling the environment for artworks.

Curatorial Plan

In collaboration with the Museum’s leadership, Herzog & de Meuron developed a series of gallery typologies to best display and develop PAMM’s growing collection. Different modes of display are deployed in a non-linear sequence, allowing visitors to map their own experiences of the Museum’s collection and physical space. The permanent collection galleries are located on the first and second levels. The latter of which also houses special exhibitions. Offering natural light and views of the surrounding park and bay, outward-facing exhibition spaces alternate with more enclosed galleries that focus on single subjects.

Art is displayed throughout the entire building, including the garden and the parking garage. A mostly glazed envelope on the first and third levels reveals the public and semi-public functions within: entry halls, auditorium, shop, and café on the first level, education facilities and offices on the third. By offering a specific range of differently proportioned spaces and a variation of interior finishes, as opposed to a traditional sequence of generic white cubes, PAMM proposes a new model of curating and experiencing art.

The post Herzog & de Meuron’s Pérez Art Museum
creates new “vernacular” for Miami appeared first on Dezeen.

The new Museum Luthers Sterbehaus by Stuttgart architects Von M is a grey-brick extension to the house where Martin Luther died – but it turns out the Christian reformer “actually died in another building around the corner” (+ slideshow + photos by Zooey Braun).

The “death house” museum extends a late-Gothic house in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the town of Eisleben, Germany, that centres around the life of Luther, a key protagonist in the reform of Christianity in the sixteenth century.

Until recently the house was believed to be the place of Luther’s death, so Von M was commissioned to restore the house to its sixteenth-century appearance as part of a larger project to convert the site into a museum dedicated to the life of the man and the history of the reformation.

“Today we know it isn’t the building where Martin Luther died; it was a mistake and he actually died in another building around the corner that doesn’t exist any more,” Von M’s Dennis Mueller told Dezeen.

“As it was the building for thinking of Martin Luther, it is still seen as the Luther Sterbehaus [Luther’s Death House],” he added. “We still see the old building as not only a space for exhibitions, but as one of the most important parts of the exhibition. It’s an exhibit itself.”

The two-storey extension is located behind the old house and is constructed from pale grey bricks that were cut using jets of water to create an uneven texture.

“The colour of the bricks was especially chosen for the project so that the facade chimes together with the materials of the old building,” said Mueller.

The main entrance can be found at the rear of the site, leading visitors through to exhibition galleries and events rooms with exposed concrete walls and ceilings.

A ramped corridor slopes down to meet the slightly lower level of the old house, which has been completely restored.

Photography is by Zooey Braun.

Here’s some extra information from Von M:

Museum Luthers Sterbehaus

The building which is one of the UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites was extensively renovated and extended by a new building into a museum complex showing a permanent exhibition as well as exhibitions presenting diverse and specific aspects and topics.

The basic principle for the restoration of the building were the historically documented reconstructions by Friedrich August Ritter in 1868 and Friedrich Wanderer in 1894.

The relocation of the main entrance and all other important functional rooms into the new building made it possible to largely preserve the existing basic structure of the old building.

Because of its clear cubature and structure, the new building that is connected to the existing one expresses itself in a self-conscious and contemporary speech, still it subordinates itself under the existing and its environment conditioned by the materiality of its facade as well as the differentiation of the single parts of the building in dimension and height.

Because of the mutual integration of the new and the existing building a significant and impressing round tour through the museum rooms has been developed – a tour that confronts the visitor with a diversity of aspects and themes of the permanent exhibition “Luthers letzter Weg”.

The post Martin Luther “death house” museum
by Von M built at wrong address appeared first on Dezeen.

News: Danish architecture firm BIG has won a competition to design a new Museum of the Human Body in Montpellier, France.

The Cité du Corps Humain (Museum of the Human Body) by BIG will be part of a newly developed extension to the Parc Marianne area of the city.

The museum will focus on the human body from an artistic, scientific and societal point of view by hosting cultural activities, interactive exhibitions, performances and workshops.

The 7800-square-metre building will comprise eight curved interlocking spaces on one level.

Their roofs will slope up from the ground in alternate directions, creating accessible elevated areas of landscaping overlooking the park and surrounding city. Those that slope up from one side will be paved, while those coming from the other direction will be covered with turf.

“Like the mixture of two incompatible substances – oil and vinegar – the urban pavement and the park’s turf flow together in a mutual embrace forming terraced pockets overlooking the park and elevating islands of nature above the city,” said BIG founder Bjarke Ingels. “A series of seemingly singular pavilions weave together to form a unified institution – like individual fingers united together in a mutual grip.”

The main reception hall will be located in the middle of the structure and all the spaces will be connected with a corridor that nestles round the curved halls. There will be five additional entrances spread around the site.

The curvilinear outer walls will be screened with glass-fibre-reinforced concrete louvres. Their orientation will constantly change along the building’s length to maintain optimal shading despite the altering angle of the sun as the glass curves backwards and forwards.

Construction is scheduled to start in 2016 and due for completion in 2018.

Here’s the announcement from BIG:

BIG + A+Architecture + Egis + Base + L’Echo + Celsius Environnement + CCVH have been announced winner of the international design competition for the new Cité du Corps Humain (Museum of the Human Body) in Montpellier, France.

The Museum of the Human Body, which will be part of the newly developed area Parc Marianne, is rooted in the humanist and medical tradition of Montpellier and its world renowned medical school, which dates back to the tenth century. The new Museum will explore the human body from an artistic, scientific and societal approach through cultural activities, interactive exhibitions, performances and workshops.

The 7,800 m² (ca. 84,000 sqf) museum is conceived as a confluence of the park and the city – nature and architecture – bookending the Charpak Park along with the Montpellier city hall.

The building’s program consists of eight major spaces on one level, organically shaped and lifted to form an underlying continuous space.

Multiple interfaces between all functions create views to the park, access to daylight, and optimizing internal connections.

The museum’s roof functions as an ergonomic garden – a dynamic landscape of vegetal and mineral surfaces that allow the park’s visitors to explore and express their bodies in various ways – from contemplation to the performance – from relaxing to exercising – from the soothing to the challenging.

The façades of the Museum of the Human Body are transparent, maximizing the visual and physical connection to the surroundings.

On the sinuous façade that oscillates between facing North and South, East and West, the optimum louver orientation varies constantly, protecting sunlight, while also resembling the patterns of a human fingerprint – both unique and universal in nature.

The jury, headed by the City’s Mayor Ms Hélène Mandroux, chose BIG over 5 other shortlisted international teams and praised BIG’s design for combining innovative, environmental and functional qualities.

The new Museum will contribute to Montpellier’s rich scientific and cultural heritage, attracting tourists, families, as well as school classes, academics and art lovers. Construction is scheduled to start in 2016, and the building will open its doors to the public in 2018.

The Museum of the Human Body follows BIG’s experience in museum design as well as contributes to BIG’s growing activities in France.

BIG recently completed the Danish National Maritime Museum, in which crucial historic elements are integrated with an innovative concept of galleries. Other current cultural projects include the LEGO House in Billund, the recently announced Blaavand Bunker Museum in Western Denmark, and MECA Cultural Center in Bordeaux, along with EuropaCity, an 80 hectare masterplan on the outskirts of Paris.

Partners in Charge: Bjarke Ingels, Andreas Klok Pedersen
Project Leader: Gabrielle Nadeau
Project Manager:Jakob Sand
Team: Birk Daugaard, Chris Falla, Alexandra Lukianova, Oscar Abrahamsson, Katerina Joannides, Aleksander Wadas, Marie Lançon, Danae Charatsi, Alexander Ejsing.
Client: Ville de Montpellier

Collaborators:

A+ Architecture (Local Architect)
Egis Bâtiment Méditerranée (Structural + MEP engineers)
Base (Landscape Architect)
L’Echo (Financial Consultant)
Celsius Environnement (Sustainability Consultant)
Cabinet Conseil Vincent Hedon (Acoustic Consultant)

The post BIG wins competition to design Museum
of the Human Body in Montpellier appeared first on Dezeen.

If on your next trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art you spy a bivouac of bejeweled butterflies, do not be alarmed. The gem-encrusted insects are among the one-of-a-kind creations of Joel A. Rosenthal, better known by the only initials that can strike fear in the jewelry-loving hearts of those accustomed to getting everything they desire: JAR. The uncompromising designer is the subject of a glittering exhibition that opens today at the Met. We sent writer Nancy Lazarus to take a sneak peek.

JAR’s Tulip Brooch (2008) and Colored Ball Necklace (1999) are among the more than 400 works in the Met’s “Jewels by JAR” exhibition. (Photographs by Jozsef Tari. Courtesy of JAR, Paris.)

The city of lights is an apt setting for a jeweler who creates brilliant one-of-a-kind gemstones. Joel A. Rosenthal (JAR) set up shop 35 years ago on Place Vendôme and now New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is celebrating the Bronx-born craftsman with a retrospective that marks two other firsts. It’s JAR’s first American museum exhibit and the Met’s first exhibit devoted to a living jeweler.

“Joel is not here in person now, but he’s here in spirit,” said Jane Adlin, the exhibit’s organizing curator and associate curator of modern and contemporary art, during a press preview held earlier this week. If JAR had shown up, he would have observed an awestruck audience taking in the description-defying display of gems. Adlin collaborated with research assistant, Lori Zabar, and with exhibition design manager, Michael Lapthorn. The exhibit, on view through March 9, 2014, is set in a large, dimly lit gallery where only the cases and the 400-plus intensely colored jewels are illuminated.

“JAR is a talented sculptor who uses jewels as his medium,” said Jennifer Russell, associate director for exhibitions. “It’s an astounding range of work in terms of size, scale, range, and subject matter and it’s an amazing array of objects,” she added. Many of the jewels are inspired by nature: waves, shells, stars, vegetables, fruits, butterflies, birds, and exotic creatures. Others are based on accessories, such as fans or handkerchiefs. In the collection JAR designed for his international clientele are earrings, brooches, rings, bracelets, watches, picture frames, decorative boxes, and a bejeweled glass jar.
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The Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum recently kicked off “Design by Hand,” a new series focused on the craftsmanship, innovations, and merits of contemporary global designers, with an evening that spotlighted Marimekko. We sent writer Nancy Lazarus to get an inside look at the Finnish design house, renowned for its original prints and colors.

Marimekko’s Jussarö cotton fabric, designed by Aino-Maija Metsola, is part of the Helsinki-based company’s new Weather Diary collection. Below, Sami Ruotsalainen’s teapot uses the Räsymatto pattern designed by Maija Louekari.

While the name Marimekko is based on “Mari” a girl’s name, and “mekko,” the Finnish word for dress, to its legions of worldwide fans it stands for fond memories and cheery graphic prints. The Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum recently hosted an event featuring three Marimekko designers: fashion and textile designer Mika Piirainen, ceramics and product designer Sami Ruotsalainen, and print designer Aino-Maija Metsola. While each designer offered a unique insider’s perspective, selected themes surfaced that shed light on the brand’s impressive longevity:

Potpourri of patterns: “While Marimekko is known for bold designs, it’s not all about massive prints, it’s also about contrasts,” Piirainen said. “We’re crazy about dots, and circles are the friendliest shapes in the world. We’re crazy about stripes, too,” he added. Flowers and their textures are also popular motifs, even black and white solids. Recently these designers have also turned their focus to smaller prints.

Individual inspirations and influences: “It’s important that inspirations for products are close to you so people know there are emotions behind them,” Metsola said. Finland’s islands in the archipelago, seasonal weather patterns, and vegetation form the basis of much of her work, such as her “Weather Diary” aquarelles or “Midsummer Magic” collections. Piirainen is also influenced by nature, and takes photos during his travels to Lapland and Australia. For Ruotsalainen, food and items of everyday life impact his designs.
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