Hasta La Ideas

Just last week, we were at a show where there were three contestants on stage. We kept looking at one of them, wondering just how we knew her. From some other comedy show? A designer at some firm who had stopped by this writer’s office sometime? Only last night did we realize, “Oh yeah, she was the woman who won the Museum of Science and Industry‘s ‘Month at the Museum‘ contest last year.” We’re embarrassed to admit that, given that both the Chicago museum and Kate McGroarty (that’s her name) received international attention for the project, wherein she spent a month living and working in the MSI. And given all of that attention, we knew it was just a matter of time before the museum relaunched it, for another taste of a very media-friendly project. Sure enough, like some sort of cosmic kismet, just this week they’ve announced ‘Month at the Museum 2: Science Never Sleeps.” If you enjoyed last year’s run, or want to give it another go, you’ll find some details below:

Even before Kate moved out last November, people asked if we’d do it again. After the experience with Kate, the answer is…absolutely. One person couldn’t possibly do it all, and some new elements will make the month even more of an adventure.

MSI once again is seeking someone to take on this amazing assignment: spend a Month at the MuseumTM to live and breathe science 24/7 for 30 days. From Oct. 19 to Nov. 17, 2011, this person’s mission will be to experience all the fun and education that fits in this historic 14-acre building, living here full-time and reporting his or her findings to the outside world.

Sure, it’s a commitment. But if you are chosen and then successfully complete Month at the Museum 2, you’ll walk away with a prize of $10,000, a package of tech gadgets, and new knowledge and experiences that may just transform you.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has perhaps the most discussed film program in the country, though not always for its films. After a long slog of negative press between 2009 and 2010, with several threats of high-profile but ultimately avoided financial cutbacks, the program has been on an upward “good news” trajectory for some time now. First, the museum announced back in the spring that they’d partnered with Film Independent to help keep the program strong and growing, and now they’ve announced that long-time film critic Elvis Mitchell will be joining the program, serving as curator of a new weekly film series. Mitchell, who was perhaps most well known during his time at the NY Times, but was most recently, and only for three months, the lead critic at Movieline, will relocate to Los Angeles to fill to LACMA position. It will also bring him closer to his other job, which he’s had since the mid-90s, as the host of KCRW‘s show, The Treatment. Here’s a bit from the LA Times about his taking on the new role:

In perhaps a reference to his own employment restlessness, Mitchell said of the LACMA announcement: “This position is a double reunion for me. Selling tickets at the Bing Theater at LACMA was my first job in L.A., and to get to return to supervise a program at a place that is an intersection of art and popular culture is a dream come true…I couldn’t be happier. That is, until I get started.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Wiggling back and forth across an Amsterdam nature reserve, this curved timber maze by Dutch architect Anne Holtrop was designed to stage an exhibition of landscape paintings. 

Made from untreated poplar, the Temporary Museum (Lake) had a lifespan of just six weeks.

More stories about pavilions on Dezeen »

Photography is by Bas Princen.

Here is some more information from Anne Holtrop:

Temporary Museum (Lake)
Anne Holtrop

The drawings that were used to make the Temporary Museum (Lake) were made by chance.

Not likeness or beauty is its key aspect, as in traditionalism; nor logic or ratio as in modernism; but rather ‘the possible’ in the sense of what is merely conceivable, the idea that all things can be perceived and conceived differently.

Chance struck me as a way of making work that does not reference to anything specific.

But the mind of the viewer, like my mind, wishes to see things in them, like in a Rorschach inkblot. Jumping between different visions the mind projects its own ideas on it.

Each construction, each gesture is a new reality. So is the use of one of these drawings to make the temporary museum.

See also:

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Trail House by Anne Holtrop	Eureka Pavilion by NEX and Marcus Barnett	Driftwood pavilion by AA Unit 2 opens

Moss is expected to grow on the perforated aluminium skin of this museum extension in San Sebastián by Spanish studio Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos.

With its rear wall pushed into the edge of the hillside, the new two-storey block stretches out at a right-angle to the San Telmo Museum.

A staircase ascends across the block, allowing vistors to climb over the roof and onto the landscape.

The museum extension contains galleries for temporary exhibitions as well as an auditorium, library, teaching areas, cloakroom, shop and cafeteria.

See also: our story from yesterday on the Moritzburg Museum Extension in Germany by Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos.

Photography is by Fernando Alda. See more images of this project onAlda’s website.

This information is from the architects:

San Telmo Museum Extension
Competition 1st Prize 2005

The Museum of San Telmo, in its present condition, represents the result of a long process of successive modifications which has partially altered its physical and functional character over the years.

Its location on the fringe where the urban structure meets the topography of Monte Urgull is a reflection, on the other hand, of an urban problem very characteristic of San Sebastian: the solution of a division never completely solved between natural and artificial landscape.

How to approach a contemporary extension of San Telmo in response to new requirements for space and stringent landscaping conditions, while expressing its connection to the location with the passing of time?

The direct and radical gesture which defines out proposal implies paradoxically its practical dissolution in the landscape of Monte Urgull.

We will limit ourselves to building a new green wall, deep and light, which is defined by the existing topography, and which hides in its interior two pavilions which will house the new programme.

This decision heighten the appreciation both of the historical buildings as well as the new entrance to the museum, which offers access to the old building – which will incorporate the permanent exhibitions – as well as to the new pavilion for temporary exhibitions.

The main vestibule will therefore constitute a natural link with the new areas for cloakrooms, shop, auditorium, mediatheque, didactic hall and cafeteria which complete the necessary areas in a museum with these characteristics.

A “green wall”: on certain occasions the metaphor associated with an architectural idea gives a sense to each and every aspect of the project.

Hence the slight changes of direction of the wall are sufficient to provide a natural solution to pedestrian access to Monte Urgull, to configure an open air exhibition space, or to house a café-terrace open to the landscape and to the town.

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Rather an expression of the relation natural/artificial which runs throughout our proposal, the new building/screen will be defined by a perforated metal skin enveloped in moss, lichen and other plant species which finally will come to surround the whole building.

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In collaboration with the artists Leopoldo Ferrán and Agustina Otero starting with a combinatorial game of cast-aluminium pieces expressly conceived for this occasion, this will be an unusual intervention in a public area which represents a common field of action between plastic arts and architecture.

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The new extension of the San Telmo Museum will modify its appearance with the passing of the seasons: it will fade on occasions and blend with the vegetation on the hill, and will reappear on other occasions evoking a long unfinished wall: an unexpected metaphor – perhaps – of the difficult relation which architecture establishes with the pass of time.

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Location: Plaza de Zuloaga, San Sebastián
Client: San Sebastián City Council
Architects: Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos, S.L.P. – Fuensanta Nieto, Enrique Sobejano

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Project Architect: Miguel Ubarrechena
Collaborators: Stephen Belton, Juan Carlos Redondo, Pedro Guedes, Joachim Kraft, Alexandra Sobral

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Site Supervision: Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos, S.L.P. – Fuensanta Nieto, Enrique Sobejano, Miguel Mesas Izquierdo, Technical Architect
Facade Artistic Intervention: Leopoldo Ferrán, Agustina Otero

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Structure: NB 35 S.L.
Mechanical Engineer: R. Úrculo Ingenieros Consultores, S.A.
Fire Prevention Systems: 3i Ingeniería Industrial
Models: Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos S.L.P. – Juan de Dios Hernández, Jesús Rey

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Project: 2006
Construction: 2007-2011
Construction Company: U.T.E. San Telmo. Amenabar / Moyua

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Moritzburg Museum Extension by Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos	Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art by Steven Holl	Akron Art Museum by Coop Himmelb(l)au

Photographer Roland Halbe has sent us these images of an extension to a museum inside a ruined castle in Halle, Germany, by Spanish studio Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos.

The architects inserted the extension above the 15th century stonework of the Moritzburg Museum, providing a roof to the previously open-air top floor.

A new floor suspended from the centre of this roof creates an additional exhibition area without bringing any columns into the main gallery.

The extension also includes the addition of a trapezium-shaped metal entrance.

More architecture photographed by Roland Halbe on Dezeen »
More stories about museums on Dezeen »

The following information is from the architects:

Moritzburg Museum Extension
Competition 1st Prize 2004

The ancient castle of Moritzburg in the city of Halle is a very valuable example of Gothic military architecture, typical of Germany at the end of the 15th century. Its turbulent history has inevitably been reflected in the many alternations it has undergone over the years. But despite these, the building still keeps the original structure of its main architectural features: the surrounding wall, three of the four round towers at the corners and the central courtyard.

The partial destruction of the north and west wings in the 17th century during the Thirty Years War left the castle with the image of a romantic ruin which it has kept over the centuries to today. Except for a stillborn project by Karl Friedrich Schinkel in 1828, until now no integral work has been planned to alter and enlarge the ancient ruin for the art museum housed there since 1904.

A very notable collection of modern art – mainly of German Expressionism – that includes works painted by Lyonel Feininger in the city of Halle has now been enlarged with the Gerlinger donation, one of the most valuable private collections of the Die Brücke Expressionist group.

Our proposal for enlargement is based on a single and clear architectural idea. It involves a new roof, conceived as a large folded platform, which rises and breaks to allow natural light to enter, and from which the new exhibition areas hang.

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The result of this operation is to free completely the floor of the ancient ruin, providing a unique space that allows a range of exhibition possibilities. This design is complemented with the building of two new vertical communication cores.

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The first is located in the north wing to connect the levels which must be inter-communicated. The second is a new, contemporary tower, 25 metres high, in the place once occupied by the bastion, which provides access to the new exhibition areas with their distant views over the city.

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The angular geometry of the new scenery of roofs and metal tower contrasts with castle’s existing irregular shape and high roof. In spirit with the uneasy and expressive forms painted by Feininger, on display in the museum, the new fragments continue the process of changes that feature in the history of the Moritzburg Castle over time.

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Location: Halle, Saale (Germany)
Client: Stiftung Moritzburg. State of Sachsen – Anhalt
Architects: Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos, S.L.P. – Fuensanta Nieto, Enrique Sobejano

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Project Architect : Sebastian Sasse
Competition Collaborators: Vanesa Manrique, Nina Nolting, Olaf Syrbe, Miguel Ubarrechena
Project Collaborators: Udo Brunner, Nina Nolting, Dirk Landt, Susann Euen, Siverin Arndt
Site Supervision: Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos S.L.P. – Fuensanta Nieto, Enrique Sobejano, Sebastian Sasse, Johannes Stumpf, Karl Heinz Bosse
Structure: GSE, Jorg Enseleit
I M.E.P. Engineers: Rentschler y Riedesser, Jürgen Trautwein
Models: Juan de Dios Hernández-Jesús Rey

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Project: 2005-2008
Construcción: 2006 – 2008
Roof Construction Company: Dornhöfer GmbH

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Castelo Novo by Comoco Architects	Templo de Diana by José María Sánchez García	City Walls of Logroño by Pesquera Ulargui Arquitectos