Living Spaces: Museums
Museums are both container and contents; they have substance and a function; they are manifestations of ideas and intentions. Spaces – when they are staged sites with physical presence – are in a constant state of interaction with their users. Because to fulfil a specific objective, they influence – and vice versa – the perception of their users and thereby create new realities.In our current Office.Info series, we take a look at spaces with special identities and inquire into the ways in which their design and functionality operate. We begin with museums, cultural ceremonial spaces situated between archival knowledge and the fetishism of experience.
There is something to the saying that spaces have character. Regardless of whether we want to work, learn, teach, communicate, entertain or relax in them – the space "created" for this purpose clearly references the idiosyncrasies of its users and their activities. But whether or not it "functions" is another question and depends entirely on whether it reaches us emotionally. In the final analysis, impact really is more than the quadratic root of room height + wall colour + floor space.
In the eye of the beholder
Of course, museums are especially complex. Because this is where the architect is usually the star, and promises are made to visitors that shape their expectations before they even set foot in the building. Contemporary museum buildings present themselves in truly spectacular ways seldom seen in the prior century, confidently laying claim to public esteem and discussion. Whether Yoshio Taniguchi’s MoMA in New York, Shigeru Ban and Jean de Gastine’s Musée des Confluences in Lyon, Jean Nouvel’s Louvre in Abu Dhabi or Ortner & Ortners Museum in Vienna – the museum is a work of art and a prestigious architectonic building. But how does it behave in its interactions with its "residents", its art, its visitors, or even as a workplace? Does it fulfil new requirements, or are more traditional tasks given priority? What is certain is that since its genesis the museum has been a space with a very special atmosphere and major challenges.
Contemplation or experience?
The quiet room is bathed in amber light broken by blinds, falling softly through the high windows to gently rest upon the parquet floor and the upholstered benches. Paintings on the lilac-coloured walls. A pleasant silence all around. Single steps sound out now and again, as if from a great distance. Ron loves the morning hours, when there are only a few visitors in the museum. Time seems to march to a different rhythm here, to forget the purposeful business outside, as if the museum was created to grant space for thoughts that gradually unfold.
Projects with a mission
The word ‘museum’ comes from ancient Greek. Classical Greece paid homage to the muses, the protective goddesses of art, culture and knowledge, at specific sites. The first museum according to our understanding of the concept was the Capitoline Museum in Rome, founded by Pope Sixtus IV in 1471, shortly before the Vatican Museum made its sculpture collection accessible to an upper-class audience in 1506.
By the 18th century, however, museums were already among the most important projects of renowned architects. Vienna’s museums of art history and natural history, magnificent monumental structures, were built between 1871 and 1891 in the Italian Renaissance style according to designs by Gottfried Semper and Carl von Hasenauer. Visitors today are still impressed by the marvellous entryways, staircases and cupolas, which radiate an atmosphere of greatness and grandeur while symbolising the political statement and educational mission of their age.
Historical architecture continued to shape the appearance of museum buildings well into the 20th century. Then a modern, unbridled joy in experimentation took hold of museum architecture. And star architects such as Hans Hollein, Daniel Libeskind, Frank O. Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Mario Botta, Tadao Ando, Jean Nouvel and Renzo Piano created and continue to create new, exciting cultural spaces that serve as the image for entire cities. Sometimes these sites are planned and built before the building’s contents have even been decided. One example for this is Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin. In the first two years after it opened in 1999, 350,000 visitors streamed through its doors – even though the building was completely empty. Visitors were simply fascinated by the primarily asymmetrical spaces with their uncompromising appearance, created by surfaces and their interruptions.
This is not a museum
The first modern museum to shape our contemporary understanding of modern museum architecture was the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the 1940s and opened in 1959. Hilla von Rebay, one of the museum’s founders, wrote to Wright: "I want a temple of the spirit, a monument." And that's what it became.
The building rises into the heights in a spiral open to the skies. Visitors can reach the top of the glass cupola with a lift. From there, they wander down the spiral ramp; the artworks on the walls are companions on the journey. The structure is not just limited to this area, though. The round building is open towards the middle, which creates a comfortably spacious atmosphere as well as views into other floors, so that mental lines can be drawn across the space (and through the periods represented). The galleries are also subdivided into different sections that are connected with the spiral corridor. This spatial arrangement imitates citrus fruits with their membranes; like many other elements in the building, there are allusions to nature and organic forms, not in a spatial sense but also in a thematic sense with the proximity to Central Park.
The building earned both praise and fierce criticism, the latter mainly from artists and art critics who believed that the museum was completely unsuitable presenting art; the structure was thought to dominate the art, putting it in the shadows. Wright, on the other hand, viewed his concept as a wonderful symphony of architecture and visual art, something that did not yet exist in this form in the world of art.
Ingenious and multifunctional
In addition to the architectural demand for uniqueness, museum presentation methods and their focus of activity have changed dramatically. The actual exhibition areas have grown more dynamical in recent decades. Modern museums have not only grand entryways, but also cafes, museum shops, recreational areas, libraries, family zones and outdoor spaces whenever possible. Add to that rooms for theatre, restaurants, presentations, events and conferences. In the recently (re)opened Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, architect Randall Stout created a "New Vision" that impresses with it added spaces and rational architecture: a huge glass facade, curved shapes that look like loops, a terrace with sculptures, a lounge that "floats" in space. A visit is definitely an experience; the museum is a living space to which visitors feel drawn and where they enjoy spending time. The art on exhibit has not been short-changed either: there is almost twice as much exhibition space as there was in the prior building.
This is what defines one of today’s most striking trends. Variety, interaction, flexibility, supported by medial diversity and high technical standards, fashion museum space into a creative stage where an incredible array of encounters take place. This is all accompanied by performative and simulated room concepts that focus on the sensory and emotional experience. With an interdisciplinary result.
Culturetainment...
If one museum works, many others can work as well. The idea of modern "culturetainment" is topped, as so often before, on the Arabian Peninsula. Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, a cultural district is rising up, including gigantic art cities with world-renowned names: the Louvre Abu Dhabi, designed by Jean Nouvel, is a cluster-type collection of buildings under a half-transparent roof. The mighty Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is also being built (read our interview with Verena Formanek, Senior Project Manager), designed – as in Bilbao – by Frank O. Gehry, a structure comprised of rammed and intertwined cuboids, prisms and cones. Both museums will be spectacular jewels of architecture that draw from traditional regional architecture and interpret it in a modern way. The Zayed National Museum, also on Saadiyat, was designed by Foster + Partners architects based on a concept inspired by falconry, a powerful symbol in the United Arab Emirates. The five towers will surge out of the earth in the shape of wings. Tadao Ando, known for his monastic, cool architecture made of exposed concrete, has designed the fourth museum, the Maritime Museum, on the basis of the daus, the traditional sailboats of Arabian merchants. Further spectacular buildings are being planned by Zaha Hadid and Hani Rashid, among others.
... versus privacy
Of course, the counterargument also has validity. In Italy above all, the reigning idea is that art should be not be divorced from the context in which it was created; instead, art should remain in its original architectonic environment. People here prefer a fundamental connection between the collection, historical space and museum architecture. The latter element should create a primarily functional context and be as neutral as possible. A classic example for this is the Museo Castelvecchio in Verona, designed by Carlo Scarpa. The Spanish Museum for Roman Art in Mérida also attempts to generate as authentic an environment as possible. The exhibits are shown in Rafael Moneo’s concrete structure cloaked in roof tiles. He takes different elements of Roman architecture and translates them into a contemporary architectural idiom so that the museum and the collection form an unmistakable unit that visitors experience as a total artwork.
As our brief foray here shows, museum space can be interpreted in many ways and designed in endless varieties. Regardless of whether it's quiet contemplation or interactive experience, documentation or experimental laboratory situations, narrative show or performance – the spatial experience is in the final analysis an emotional trigger that crystallises all intentions and lets the design emerge. - Or not. Exciting!
Ronnie Sambor / Brigitte Schedl-Richter
