Archinect - News

Selldorf will join SOM for the Hirshhorn Museum's vital third revitalization phase

2022-10-31T18:03:00-04:00

Washington, D.C.’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has announced that a joint team of SOM and Selldorf Architects will lead a major modernization of its now 48-year-old Gordon Bunshaft-designed facility in the last of a three-phase campus revitalization that will begin in 2025, according to the Washington Post.

The upgrades will cover the interior and plaza area and are being undertaken in order to help the museum adjust to a 40% rise in attendance that has been recorded since 2017.

The project will address important areas such as storage, stormwater management, accessibility, vertical transportation, and other upgrades to its galleries and public areas to correspond with the museum’s needs. In a press statement, Selldorf co-principal Chris Cooper said: “Ensuring that the building is better able to accommodate the museum’s ambitious programs, while serving a larger and more diverse audience, is of critical importance. And we need to be able to do so while making the building ...

D.C.'s Hirshhorn Museum gets the final go-ahead from the National Capital Planning Commission

2021-12-06T13:32:00-05:00

The end is finally here for the saga surrounding artist Hiroshi Sugimoto's reworking of the Washington, D.C. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden following an approval Thursday from the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC).

The NCPC go-ahead comes after another round of discord which began in March when Sugimoto allegedly threatened to quit the project over an amended plan which would have cut out his introduction of a stacked stone wall in Gordon Bunshaft’s original centerpiece water feature in the museum’s sculpture garden.

Image courtesy of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

The July proposal itself came with a bit of controversy as opponents of the plan were quick to point out that the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, which governs any new Smithsonian development, was replete of any landscape architects as recently appointed by President Joe Biden.

“The art of our time is often immersive, interactive and ready to break free of walls, and we believe that a museum of the ...

Hiroshi Sugimoto's redesign of the Hirshhorn Museum sculpture garden is finally approved by the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts

2021-07-19T12:34:00-04:00

The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts has approved plans for artist and architect Hiroshi Sugimoto's redesign of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.

This vote clears way for the Smithsonian to go to the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) for their final approval. The NCPC previously gave preliminary approvals alongside the CFA in the spring of 2019.

Images courtesy of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.

The plan had previously come under fire after the Cultural Landscape Foundation, a group that advocates the interests of historic landscape sites around the country, protested, claiming the artist's vision would harm original elements of the Hirshhorn campus designed by Pritzker Prize winner Gordon Bunshaft.

Images courtesy of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.

The museum has held a line against the protests, claiming that Bunshaft and landscape designer Lester Collins had both looked to Japanese gardens as inspir...

Hirshhorn Museum: revised sculpture garden designs and Sugimoto threatening to quit

2021-03-17T13:27:00-04:00

The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden announced today the completion of a sixth public consultation meeting for the revitalization of the Sculpture Garden by artist/architect Hiroshi Sugimoto. The public forum, held March 10 via Zoom, presented the goals of the project, the programmatic rationale and revised designs for the reflecting pool.

The Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden revitalization saga is entering a new chapter: while the museum recently released revised designs for the reflecting pool, the centerpiece of the sunken sculpture garden completed in 1974 by Gordon Bunshaft, during a March 10 Section 106 online meeting, the Cultural Landscape Foundation points out that the overhaul's designer, Hiroshi Sugimoto, had threatened to resign from the project over a key design element — the introduction of stacked stone walls in the current modernist landscape.

Hirshhorn Museum: sculpture garden revitalization remains contested

2021-01-13T14:20:00-05:00

Facing challenges from a federal planning authority and advocacy groups, the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC is under pressure to revamp or justify elements of a significant redesign of its sunken sculpture garden.

The heated debate over Hiroshi Sugimoto's plans to revitalize the sunken sculpture garden at the Hirshhorn Museum, completed in 1974 by Gordon Bunshaft, is dragging on.

"At an online meeting on 3 December, the federal National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) approved Sugimoto’s preliminary site development plans with the exception of the proposed changes to the reflecting pool and inner partition wall," reports The Art Newspaper.

Previously on Archinect: Advocates ready for battle over Hirshhorn Museum garden 'revitalization'

"Commissioners asked that the Hirshhorn explore an alternative to the expanded pool design that would retain the historic dimensions of the existing one. It also recommended that the Smithsonian find a way to make the new stacked stone walls more compatible with, while still distinct from, the material that Bunshaft used for his historic perimeter wall."

Meanwhile next door, the Smithsonian just scaled back elements inside the BIG-designed $2 billion Smith...

Advocates ready for battle over Hirshhorn Museum garden "revitalization"

2020-07-17T14:02:00-04:00

Advocates for the preservation of modernist landscapes in Washington have taken on another fight. After beating back the National Geographic Society’s plan to demolish “Marabar,” the 1984 sculptural installation by Elyn Zimmerman on its campus, they are now battling the Hirshhorn Museum’s proposal to redo its sunken sculpture garden by the architect Gordon Bunshaft and the landscape architect Lester Collins.

As the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. gears up to restore its existing Gordon Bunshaft-designed facilities, landscape preservation advocates have voiced concerns over parallel plans to alter and reconfigure a series of Lester Collins-designed gardens that surround the iconic circular structure. A renovation plan led by architect Hiroshi Sugimoto aims to completely reconfigure the garden areas that front the museum.

Speaking with The New York Times, Charles Birnbaum of The Cultural Landscape Foundation asks, “Why are we applying a different set of standards to the landscape architecture than to the building architecture? We should have the same goals.”

Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden to be redesigned by Hiroshi Sugimoto

2019-03-15T14:33:00-04:00

Seeking to raise its visibility and welcome more visitors, the Hirshhorn Museum plans to redesign its sunken sculpture garden to create an expanded entrance on the Mall and directly connect the artsy oasis to the museum’s main plaza.

"Following a successful renovation of the museum’s lobby by architect/artist Hiroshi Sugimoto, which has welcomed nearly a million visitors since its opening, the museum began working with Sugimoto to develop a concept design for the garden," reads the museum's announcement released earlier this week.

"Adjacent to the National Mall, the sunken garden is barely visible to both Mall and museum visitors. Sugimoto’s early concept calls for an enhanced entrance facing the National Mall, directly engaging the more than 35 million people who pass through each year. The new vision will create spaces for large-scale contemporary works and performances, as well as intimate spaces for the museum’s modern masterpieces. Initial concept designs also include reopening the underground passage, which has been closed for 30 years, but was an important element in architect Gordon Bunshaft’s original design, connecting the garden to the museum plaza."

Director of Hirshhorn Museum resigns over Bubble's uncertainty

2013-05-24T14:49:00-04:00

Richard Koshalek, the director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, said on Thursday that he was resigning after the board of trustees failed to reach a consensus on the future of a long-planned project to cover the museum’s interior courtyard with a temporary inflatable bubble.

Diller-Scofidio's Hirshhorn Bubble: One More Chance?

2013-02-07T16:18:00-05:00

As a public-art stunt, the Seasonal Inflatable is troubling. The Hirshhorn should build it anyway.

If and when the Inflatable is first inflated, perhaps in fall 2014—that’s the latest, and perhaps the last, aspirational launch date—the architectural pavilion known informally as the Bubble and somewhat more officially as the Bloomberg Balloon could serve as another kind of proof: that Hirshhorn Director Richard Koshalek’s trust in architecture in art is not misplaced, and that his faith in Washington as a cultural capital is not overdetermined.

Kriston Capps writes a convincing article why Diller Scofidio's Bubble should not be bobbled.

Hirshhorn Bubble Project: The Problem With Event Art

2012-11-21T07:10:00-05:00

To fund the Bubble, the museum originally turned to Bloomberg, planning to call it the Bloomberg Balloon in honor of a $1 million (or greater) gift. But, perhaps tellingly, the Hirshhorn has not consistently referred to the Bloomberg Balloon as such, suggesting there may still be room—or the need—for a larger donor. Diminishing federal support certainly won’t fund the Bubble, and to date, the museum's board has not stepped up to bridge the funding gap.

Doug Aitken Will Turn Hirshhorn Into 360-Degree Screen

2012-02-23T15:08:00-05:00

As if Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s giant inflatable balloon set to rise (sometime) from its roof, Up-style, weren’t a sufficiently kinetic addition to the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C., the institution announced in a press release yesterday that artist Doug Aitken will turn the building’s circular facade into an enormous 360-degreen screen for nearly two months this spring.