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Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario announces major expansion project led by Selldorf Architects, Diamond Schmitt, and Two Row Architect

2022-04-28T14:35:00-04:00

Fresh on the heels of Selldorf Architects’ most recent museum upgrade, the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) announced its selection of a team led by Annabelle Selldorf's firm to oversee its new AGO Global Contemporary expansion beginning in 2024.

Two Row Architects will join Diamond Schmitt on the project that will give the institution an extended footprint for the first time since its last Frank Gehry-designed expansion opened in the fall of 2008.

The museum has undergone a total of seven renovations since first opening in 1900, and is now looking to add about 50,000 square feet of new galleries that reportedly comes in the form of “flexible volumes suited to the varied media of contemporary art.”

The AGO’s director Stephan Jost also said “we want the work we show to reflect the city that we serve,” and that the expansion should be responsive to the institution’s new targets for audience development and community involvement. Plans are for a six-story tower to be constructed along the...

Spain grants final approval for Foster + Partners Museo del Prado expansion

2021-09-30T13:42:00-04:00

Following a six-year delay fueled by the Covid-19 crisis and by political and financial tensions reverberating throughout the country, Spain’s council of ministers has awarded Madrid’s Museo Nacional del Prado $42 million to complete a long-anticipated expansion. The country will dole out the funds over a three-year span, allowing the institution to renovate the neighboring Hall of Realms, which it purchased in 2012.

The Foster + Partners-led Museo del Prado expansion was originally announced in 2016 and planned to coincide with the museum’s 200th anniversary three years later. The project, which is being coordinated with the help of Madrid-based Rubio Arquitectura, will focus on the adjacent 17th-century Hall of Realms that was acquired by the museum in 2012, the same year Spain’s unemployment rate reached a plateau of nearly 25%.

The government-approved plan would come in three stages separate from the Ministry of Culture’s annual budget. The expansion will be complete by 2024, according to El Pais.

A criticism of London's museum effect and the survival of everyday spaces

2018-08-31T14:39:00-04:00

London is pure object in these images and likewise in those taken from the other aforementioned viewing points. Like visitors to a museum, we wander the corridors atop the Switch House and observe the artefacts curated for our all-consuming gaze: a shard, a walkie-talkie, a gherkin, etc. Like Tower Bridge, the new Museum of London, Battersea Power Station and the Tate Modern, the skyline of the city is presented as a display – complete with its own exhibition gift shop.

George Kafka argues that London's trend in preservation and commemoration in the built environment is directly related to the decline of small-scale spaces and small businesses centered around everyday life.

Kafka cites recent developments in London's built environment over the past few years: the V&A preserving a of a section of Robin Hood Gardens, the Museum of London moving into Smithfield Market, and the Tate Modern's viewing platform extension.

He does not necessarily argue against cultural preservation and commemoration, but rather aims to draw attention to a trend in "objective gaze prioritized over subjective experience" and the effect this has on the survival of small, everyday spaces.

Foster + Partners to redesign Norton Museum of Art public garden, reopening February 2019

2017-11-13T15:04:00-05:00

The Norton Museum of Art, located in West Palm Beach Florida, recently announced design plans for the first public garden designed by Norman Foster. In addition to the sub-tropical garden, Foster's design features new walkways, green spaces, and a new grand lawn. Native flora will reinforce the museum's relationship to the landscape and provide additional social space for the community. Foster's garden is an extension of The New Norton, the Museum's $100 million design expansion by Foster + Partners. The transformative Norton expansion held its groundbreaking ceremony in February 2016 and currently predicts a grand reopening set for February 2019.

The J. Ira and Nicki Harris Family Colonnade east garden view, Norton Museum of Art. Photo: Foster + Partners.

"From the beginning, we have conceived of the Norton expansion as an opportunity to create a New Norton [...] In our masterplan, it was important for us to define the Norton’s sense of place—in this case Florida’s lush subtropics....

V&A Museum addition includes $70M all-porcelain public courtyard

2017-06-30T17:33:00-04:00

The bold addition features the world's first all-porcelain public courtyard, paved with 11,000 handmade porcelain tiles in 15 different patterns. The tiles were manufactured by Koninklijke Tichelaar Makkum, the Netherlands' oldest registered company, established in 1572.

After six years of construction, the Exhibition Road Quarter, AL_A-designed courtyard space opened yesterday in London's Victoria and Albert Museum, adding 11,840 square feet of column-free flexible gallery space to the museum to help accommodate the V&A's headline exhibitions. Intended as a meeting point, public square and museum entrance, AL_A's extension is V&A’s largest architectural intervention in over 100 years.

The Norton Museum of Art celebrates construction milestone of its expansion designed by Foster + Partners

2017-06-28T10:14:00-04:00

Today, on June 27, 2017, leaders from the Norton Museum of Art and Gilbane Building Company along with museum's staff and more than 100 construction workers attended a topping off ceremony for the museum’s $100 million expansion project designed by Foster + Partners.

“We are thrilled to achieve this major construction milestone and are grateful to everyone who is helping us realize The New Norton. The expansion will allow the Museum to better serve the more than 100,000 annual visitors who attend exhibitions and programming, including the 12,000 schoolchildren the Norton educates each year,”—said executive Director Hope Alswang.“The New Norton is a transformative project for the Palm Beach County community and beyond. The new building has not only contributed jobs to our local community, it will also give our county a landmark building by an architect of international renown and dramatically expand visitation.”

Located at 1451 S Olive ave in West Palms Beach, FL, The Norton is free...

Peter Zumthor unveils scheme for Fondation Beyeler extension in Riehen

2017-05-04T18:25:00-04:00

After being unanimously chosen out of 11 renowned architecture firms, Peter Zumthor presented his vision for the expansion project of the reputable Fondation Beyeler Museum in Riehen, Basel. Joining the original Renzo Piano-designed museum building, the new expansion will provide more room for the Museum's cultural events as well as more gallery space for their growing permanent collection of modern and contemporary art.

Zumthor's scheme reflects the Museum's focus on “the visitor's personal and sensory experiences in encountering art and nature”. The expansion will be constructed on private land of the Iselin-Weber Park, which will become accessible to the public.

The scheme distributes the Museum's various functions among three buildings, like a village-like community,: an administrative building, a transparent events pavilion, and the “House for Art”.

Images Courtesy Atelier Peter Zumthor & Partner.

Visitors will be able to easily access recreation areas in the Iselin-Weber Park a...

First glimpse of Foster + Partners and Rubio Arquitectura's Museo del Prado expansion scheme

2016-11-28T18:42:00-05:00

The Museo del Prado in Madrid has big plans for its 200th anniversary celebration in 2019. Among those plans is an expansion of the museum campus and the restoration of the historic Salón de Reinos, all of which Foster + Partners and Spanish practice Rubio Arquitectura will be in charge of designing. The team won over seven notable contenders in an international competition that included OMA, Nieto Sobejano, Souto Moura, and Gluckman Tang.

Following the museum's last major extension by architect Rafael Moneo in 1998, this expansion focuses on refurbishing the Salón de Reinos (or Hall of Realms), one of the surviving pieces of the former 17th-century Buen Retiro Palace. The expansion will also create additional gallery space for the Prado Museum's permanent and temporary exhibitions.

Read on for an excerpt from Foster + Partners' and Rubio Arquitectura's winning proposal, “Hidden Design”:

“The primary protagonist is the noble Hall of Realms, a monument which has gathered many layers o...

For Alvar Aalto's 118th b-day, a museum extension + a few enduring favorites

2016-02-04T14:10:00-05:00

Fittingly for Furniture February, Alvar Aalto would have turned 118 this month, which has prompted Archinect to celebrate his paradigm-defining designs. We're not the only ones: the existing Alvar Aalto Museum and the Museum of Central Finland will be getting an extension (the winners of the competition can be viewed here: http://www.alvaraalto.fi/ruusupuisto). One of the proposals that didn't win features Aalto-specific materiality ("light color clay bricks in grid pattern for the floors and the circulation elements to the original masonry bricks walls in a way to match the colors but announce the new building with a different texture" according to a press release by the design firm Architensions). Here are renderings of Architensions' proposed museum extension:

And, just because we can, a quick tour through some of Aalto's masterful furniture work:

February is furniture month here on Archinect! Send us your furniture musings, interviews, reviews, designs, projects and investigation...