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Tadao Ando on 'Youth' and optimism for museum design

2023-06-28T08:00:00-04:00

I believe that a museum is the light of hope [...] A place where people can obtain the ‘nutrients for the soul’ necessary for living a rich and fulfilling life.

Speaking to The Art Newspaper, Ando says: “I always struggle with where to draw the line between nature and artificiality as I proceed with design,” telling the interviewer Edwin Heathcote (who says his 2013 Museum SAN in South Korea illustrates “the crisis in contemporary architecture”) that his goal for the project was to create “one big garden” before remarking on the Bourse de Commerce in Paris, the necessity of adaptive reuse, personal health challenges, and legacy.

The final leg of the 81-year-old icon’s touring retrospective Tadao Ando: Youth exhibition culminates at Museum SAN and will remain on view until July 30th of this year.

New photos of Tadao Ando's Bourse de Commerce — Pinault Collection makeover

2021-01-07T14:08:00-05:00

After years of construction and pandemic-related delays, the Bourse de Commerce — Pinault Collection in Paris has revealed a new opening date: on January 23rd (health regulations permitting), the 113,000-square-foot private museum of French billionaire François Pinault is set to welcome the public and offer a glimpse of his extensive contemporary art collection.

Photo: Marc Domage.

The monumental venue housing the extravaganza — a former grain exchange not far away from the Musée du Louvre — is capable of outshining the art it's hosting: Tadao Ando, in collaboration with Lucie Niney and Thibaut Marca of NeM agency and Pierre-Antoine Gatier, restored and completely transformed the 18th-century building.

Photo: Marc Domage.

"The Bourse de Commerce features ten exhibition galleries, as well as reception and mediation spaces," explains the project description. "They can put on different presentations or else work together in a continuum. A 284-seat Auditorium will host talks, encounters, ...

Tadao Ando to design a museum inside a former Paris stock exchange

2017-06-29T20:59:00-04:00

Mr. Ando plans to build a circular structure with three levels of galleries inside the round building, which is bound by strict historic preservation norms. It will have 32,000 square feet of exhibition space and an underground auditorium. The museum, which will only showcase contemporary art — including pieces from Mr. Pinault’s collection of more than 3,000 works — will be renovated and run by his family’s company...

Photo: © Artefactory Lab; Tadao Ando Architect & Associates; NeM / Niney & Marca Architects; Agency Pierre-Antoine Gatier / Courtesy of Collection Pinault

Is this the first time a former stock exchange has been transformed into a museum? Either way, the new design should be open to the public by 2019, as noted in this article:

Mr. Pinault, who is one of the world’s top collectors and also owns Christie’s, said the museum would open in early 2019 after a renovation of the Bourse de Commerce, a former grain exchange that was later used as a stock market, and more recently to house the Chamber of Commerce. The building is modeled on the Pantheon and situated between the Louvre and the Pompidou Center, France’s pre-eminent contemporary art museum.