By Anna Kats Museum Design
NThe possibilitiesow of contemporary architecture: Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano, and Moshe Safdie
74 ModErn PaintErs november 2013 blouinartinfo.com Design In his 1909 Futurist Manifesto, Filippo Marinetti denounced Piano’s Whitney Museum in New York City, and Safdie’s Skir- museums as cemeteries of visual culture, reserving particular ire ball Cultural Center in Los Angeles—that present a sampling of for their physical manifestations: their architecture. Advocating issues in contemporary museum design. the razing of moribund cultural institutions, he wrote, “Divert the Gehry and Piano confront the aesthetic poles of contemporary canals to flood the cellars of the museums! Let the glorious museum design. The former has developed a highly specific canvases swim ashore!” In Marinetti’s view, museums were little visual language that determines all of his architecture: Gehry’s more than civic tombs for art. façades employ his usual twisting titanium sheets, piled one The century that followed the Italian poet’s call for cultural atop another in a mass of undulating curves and jagged angles. revolution occasionally responded to his incendiary whoop with Every Gehry building completed in the past 20 years is executed interest, and even, on occasion, with genuine ardor, but the 20th in the architect’s brand of sculpturalism, defined by a futuristic century did not treat his proposal for museological overhaul as monumentality that has become programmatic with repetition, a blueprint for cultural development: The past century has been and his museum design undertakings are no exception. Gehry’s witness to a proliferation of museums and an evolution of museum museum architecture is hardly site-specific—the cultural architecture grander in scale than that of any previous period and historic peculiarities of the settings in which he builds are of exhibition-site construction. Today we are witness to a continued typically compromised to the aesthetic unity of his oeuvre. boom in museum building that shows few signs of abating. The issue of site specificity comes to a head in Gehry’s As ever larger sums of capital are amassed in ever fewer hands, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, currently rising on Saadiyat Island, a museums are constructed with the money of private patrons cultural hub under development just off the Abu Dhabi coast to house personal art collections or to contribute conspicuously in the United Arab Emirates. Slated to open in 2014, the Abu to the civic mission of a prestigious institution—a practice Dhabi filial is an iteration of Gehry’s architectural program that determined the civic culture and the construction of cultural for his earlier Guggenheim Bilbao: A roof structure of conical Now institutions in Marinetti’s time. The overwhelming engagement titanium planes stacked in purposefully haphazard fashion of private wealth in public culture has extended the archetype of sits above a cluster of galleries and courtyards. Part of the Emirati monumental museum architecture into the 21st century. While government’s efforts to establish a destination for cultural many showpiece museum buildings are now devoid of meaning, tourism, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is to be owned by the uae engaging the egos of brand-name architects and their patrons and operated by the Guggenheim Foundation. Gehry’s firm stated , LLP S
R more than site or local culture, the museum typology is not bereft that the museum’s design pays homage to traditional Islamic
NE of commendable architecture. The luminaries of contemporary architecture, but the architect’s own words suggest that he brings architecture—Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano, and Moshe Safdie— only his own cultural biases to the Persian Gulf: “I think the are accountable on both ends. All three are currently completing best thing is to have a benevolent dictator—who has taste!” he HRY PART
GE major museum commissions—Gehry’s Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, quipped in Foreign Policy earlier this year, describing his
blouinartinfo.com november 2013 Modern Painters 75 76 ModErn PaintErs ModErn shows few signs of abating. november 2013 november to acontinued boom in and again, Piano designs large-scale museums and lavishly large-scale designs Piano and again, sweeping Time andin concrete. limestone, planes of glass, repeated the world language favorin over visual of amodernist andscope conspicuous eschews of material Gehry’s flourishes institutions, aesthetic pursues that an program cultural large locales. distant to Western architecture merelyis the latest major museum bring project to construction institutions for Guggenheim autocrats. Dhabi Abu cultural Gehry’s Hadid Foster, and Norman Zaha major design who likewise of the ranks aesthetic patron—joining amorally bankrupt brand to conditions, lendsfor his with prevailing the prestige associated Labor. working the Gehry, with Gulf in even the human-rights to quit their jobs,” coalition according “ workers by migrant museum who constructed being is heim are complicit Dhabi its Abu abuses. in Gehry In themakes Guggen ideal client. However, government working the with Emirati deeply indebted, poorly and unable defend paid, to or their rights museum building that that building museum Renzo Piano, yet for another known Piano, brand-nameRenzo architect blouinartinfo.co Today we are witness m
uae authorities responsible - articulate the Skirball in concrete inlaid with stone for buildings stone with for buildings inlaid concrete in the Skirball articulate Herscher hoped emphasize. to chosecharacteristics to Safdie traditions, whose “hospitable,American welcoming, and inclusive” museum’s exploration the mission, secular of both Jewish and that simultaneouslyand buildings and represent serve the Herscher plan Uri amaster design to director closely Skirball with worked and amphitheaters. arcades, architect The courtyards, museum complex by outdoor linked housed four is pavilions in it, the behind thatthe rise base of Mountains the Monica Santa Freeway between and the 405 longitudinally Arranged Skirball: generatormost powerful of form the is site,” says Safdie of the of theconstruction over museum’s four phases. “The architecture overseen 1975 since in plan and has the and design master hensive museum develop He to project. began the institution’s of which was just completed October, Safdie’s is in most compre society. for local and its significance traditionmodernist extensive with study of amuseum’s program symbiosis of content the and context is tenet central of Safdie’s over aesthetic that museums neitherbuilds character of adistinct the demandslatter. and client, of Safdie site, locale, Balancing bombastic museums of the former and the flavorless theof variety between suggests amiddle ground theeither or Piano, Gehry prevalent contemporary museum in architecture. paradox between extreme reduction and extreme expression suggest the over architecture, of the art primacy asserting on the publicpedestrians walkway. Weinberg’s comments, in without Line the engaging next history, High to sitting industrial for slate no with the regard blank neighborhood’sfor art—a complexity,façade or structural details afeatureless is container “deferential” its contents. to Piano’s Whitney, without definitive the for but design praising being not houses art dominate art,” a June preview of the new museum “does that building Piano’s Weinberg Adam at explained the neighborhood. director Whitney inconspicuous, addition an stepped amounts dull to exterior to them. and glass, displayed Its poured-concrete the within art to comparable and import artworks as museum quality in buildings of the possibility its replacement ever can hope be—discounts to than uptown more is home—which distinctive Breuer–designed replace to that institution’s District Meatpacking present Marcel Museum, New under currently in Whitney York’s construction the However, center in of Paris. had arrived of technology Piano’s was both aphysical that and assertion asymbolic the aesthetics work, and traversed by girders escalators, combined trussed with frame exposed-steel The its setting: reaction to in that structure togethercompleted Rogers designed 1977. and Richard in Piano Centre Pompidou his since program formal of the architect’s was museum which represents today design, the continued devolution elementwhose his absence of oftheunifying definitiveis features additions formsfunded devoid of ornamentation, rectangular in The Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, the final phase phase the final Angeles, Los Center in Cultural Skirball The thoughMoshe Safdie, museum for less known than his design whelms The nor overwhelmed is architecture. by surrounding
Safdie’s dedication the to balancing light, manipulate forms that and rectangular Punjab—all feature curvilinear Heritage Centre in Khalsa Museum Jerusalem, and the in Vashem Holocaust History Ottawa, the Yad in Canada ofcluding the National Gallery numerousHis museums—in subjects,” remarks the architect. an expression find forthese two its unique site, and how to a museum its is unique program, in thing me, the interesting museum practice: design “To
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RENZO PIANO BUILDING WORKSHOP IN COLLABORATION WITH COOPER, ROBERTSON & PARTNERS. opposite, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: TIM HURSLEY; BEN DAVID AND YAD VASHEM; TIM HURSLEY Clockwise from top: opposite: The Skirball Cultural A rendering of Renzo Center in Los Angeles, Piano’s new Whitney a five-phase, 38-year Museum of American project designed by Art in New York. Moshe Safdie; Safdie’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Opening spread: History Museum A rendering of in Jerusalem; a view Guggenheim Abu of the Taper Dhabi, designed Courtyard at Skirball. by Frank Gehry. that contrast with the dark soil and foliage of the surrounding The resulting museum is both local and international in its architec- mountains, selecting triangular steel rooftops, he notes, “to capture ture and spatial organization, which respond to the specific site the clouds and the blue of the sky in California.” The combination and program of the Skirball Cultural Center by accommodating of indoor and outdoor spaces embraces the locale’s temperate Safdie’s modernist geometry to the Californian landscape. climate, while generating a horizontal distribution of buildings Indeed, the Skirball may well represent the variety of museum harmonious with the adjoining mountainside. In fund-raising that perhaps even Marinetti could appreciate: a complex whose the construction budget, Herscher made the unorthodox decision architecture encourages sensual perception and critical thinking to warn donors that a financial contribution in no way entitled rather than merely the veneration of wealthy patrons and them to influence the institution’s architecture or programming. their pet architects. MP
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