The Bainbridge Island Museum of Art (BIMA) is the beacon that greets visitors and locals upon disembarking the Bainbridge Island ferry boat from Seattle. The building’s curve beckons visitors toward the entrance and the generous use of glazing allows people to peer into the museum displays. It provides an inspiring entry experience for everyone and represents the community’s commitment to the visual arts.
The building is the first museum dedicated to the famous World War II hero Witold Pilecki and his family. It is one of the last places to commemorate him, as his family home near Lida was demolished after the war and the traces of its surroundings were obliterated. The design is a result of balancing three elements: a historic house, a new pavilion and a garden.
House. Pilecki’s wife family house, visited by our protagonist many times, is the central element of the museum. A thorough restoration and reconstruction brought back simple and elegant form of the house. Based on archival photos, all details, cornices and window frames have also been reconstructed. So as not to interfere with the external structure, wall insulation was added from the inside. The cellars were deepened and the attic was rebuilt. The entire house was dedicated to the permanent exhibition.
The envisioned building for this museum is arranged on 3 levels, including basement. Its overall height above ground (building shape) is 25m. The building footprint is a prolonged trapezoidal form of 112,500m long by 75m at its shortest side. The total footprint area is 7,253.5 m2, which is about 55% of the site area. The building is situated in the middle of the plot creating front and back outdoor areas. The building volume is positioned at the lowest level of the site’s sloped landscape and its roof profile aligns with the landscape behind the building providing easy access to the roof garden. The entire roof-surface serves as an outdoor garden for leisure purposes with views towards the built-up area and mountain range.
X Museum is designed to become a new cultural place for the younger generation in the city of Beijing. Contemporary art is constantly evolving in our time of endless information and their complex intersections. How should one shape our cultural spaces in response to such times of uncertainty?
The grid has a particular power that extends way beyond its graphical presence. In art, it appeared as an optical device for visual explorations on perspective, particularly intense in the times of Paolo Uccello. In cartography, Cartesian coordinates have occupied extensively the world of maps as a reference system since the 17th century.
The particularity of the grid, as Rosalind Krauss has expressed in her 1980 article “Grids” published in the magazine October, is its capacity to mask and reveal, setting a seemingly ordered play of appearance and disappearance. What it reveals is what might appear over the grid once it is laid out. What it masks or occults is a pre-existing condition that its own laying out has covered, as an erasing action over a prevailing context.
The purpose of the operation is the adequacy of the old sheds of the Matadero Municipal and the construction of adjoint spaces that allow the transformation of the whole in a museum space whose main character is kinetic sculptor Francisco Sobrino.
The starting point of the proposal goes through promoting one of the most attractive points of the project, the convergent perspective of the old sheds from Cuesta del Matadero and the relation space that is left between them.
After winning an international competition in 2003 commissioned by the Flemish Government, Dutch architecture office KAAN Architecten has worked intensively on the complex masterplan, renovation and extension of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp (Belgium), also known as KMSKA (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen), bringing contemporary allure to a glorious, overlooked beauty of the 19th century. In addition to being one of the last examples of bold neoclassical architecture in the city of Antwerp, the museum houses a rich art collection that embraces seven centuries of art: from Flemish Primitives to expressionists, from paintings to drawings and sculptures. The Department of Culture, Youth and Media of the Flemish Government has invested approximately 100 million euro in the overall renovation of the building.
Photography: Karin Borghouts, Sebastian van Damme, Stijn Bollaert, Mediamixer
Primary client: Departement Cultuur, Jeugd en Media (Vlaamse Overheid)
Mandated client: Het Facilitair Bedrijf (Vlaamse Overheid)
User: Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (KMSKA)
Project costs: 66 Mln euro
Senior project leader: Walter Hoogerwerf
Project team: Valentina Bencic, Maicol Cardelli, Alice Colombo, Aksel Çoruh, Davis de Cos Roman, Sebastian van Damme, Paolo Faleschini, Raluca Firicel, Eva French i Gilabert, Michael Geensen, Narine Gyulkhasyan, Marco Jongmans, Martina Margini, Giuseppe Mazzaglia, Laura Ospina, Maurizio Papa, Ismael Planelles Naya, Giacomo Rizzi, Ralph van Schipper, Kim Sneyders, Koen van Tienen, Niels Vernooij, Martin Zwinggi
Article source: Studio Viktor Sørless, Estudio Juiñi
Studio Viktor Sørless and Estudio Juoñi have been commissioned to design a building for a research museum in the Mexican jungle. The design involves a modified step pyramid structure and ecological construction methods using earth and timber.
Together with her non-profit organisation Fundación Raíz, the Mexican art collector Fernanda Raíz is planning to construct a research museum on the edge of the tropical rainforest in southern Mexico. With its focus on people, art and science, the museum’s aim is to explore how these can coexist in harmony in the 21st century.
Article source: gmp · Architekten von Gerkan, Marg und Partner
Since the 1980s, the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai, near Macao and Hong Kong, has developed from a fishing village into one of the most favored holiday destinations in China. The touristic success of Zhuhai is based on its location directly at the sea with its numerous islands and bays, and an impressive mountain range in the background. At the same time, the city, which in the 1980s was declared one of the first free trade zones of China, generates strong economic growth. These two aspects, the history of the city with its culture and maritime connection, and its urban development, are represented in the Zhuhai Museum. The intention is for the culture building, designed by architects von Gerkan, Marg and Partners (gmp), to extend and firmly anchor cultural facilities in the city.
Atelier PRO architects designed the internal restructure and renovation for the Allard Pierson museum in Amsterdam. The museum is part of the knowledge and heritage institute of the University of Amsterdam. A transparent infill was realized within the existing building lines.
The Allard Pierson institute provides access to the public and the scientific community to the Amsterdam University collections. They cover internationally renowned collections in the fields of archaeology, cartography, book history, Jewish culture, church history, zoology, music and graphic design. It is also the place that offers space for exhibitions, studies, conferences, meetings, lectures, a museum café and a shop.