Archinect - News

Inside the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County’s new $75 million expansion

2024-11-18T07:20:00-05:00

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM) has opened its $75 million NHM Commons expansion to the public. Designed by Frederick Fisher and Partners, with landscape architecture by Studio-MLA and exhibition spaces by Studio Joseph, the NHM Commons comprises approximately 75,000 square feet of renovated and newly constructed space.

Image credit: Benny Chan

The centerpiece of the design is a transparent glass façade, creating a visual connection between the museum and Exposition Park. Inside, the Commons Theater and various multipurpose spaces have been built to accommodate an expanded slate of community-centered programming. The new spaces facilitate engagement with science, culture, and nature, including areas for those visiting without a ticket.

Image credit: Benny Chan

Outside, Studio-MLA has developed a community plaza in collaboration with Native American advisors, featuring sustainable planting, Tongva-inspired mortar i...

Masonry arches define Zaha Hadid Architects’ design for Uzbek research center

2024-10-16T08:26:00-04:00

Zaha Hadid Architects has unveiled its design for a scientific research center in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Named the Alisher Navoi International Scientific Research Center, the project is defined by arching facades and interiors built from bricks produced in local kilns.

Image credit: Norviska

The center’s defining arches seek to echo the curvilinear geometries of traditional Uzbek architecture, as well as introduce passive heating and cooling principles. Courtyards have also been incorporated within the center to improve natural light and ventilation and create a variety of outdoor gathering spaces.

Image credit: Zaha Hadid Architects

“Informed by the wind towers of Central Asian and Middle Eastern vernacular architecture that maintain cooler interior temperatures, the geometries and composition of the center’s supporting arches have been designed as hollow structures with openings that capture the wind and channel cooling ventilation into the building,” Zaha Hadid Architects explains....

Kengo Kuma completes Lisbon art center with sweeping canopy

2024-09-25T07:30:00-04:00

Kengo Kuma and Associates has completed an overhaul of the Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian (CAM) in Lisbon, marking the acclaimed architect’s first completed project in Portugal. Delivered in collaboration with OODA (Oporto Office for Design and Architecture), the scheme draws inspiration from the Engawa, a sheltered walkway typical of Japanese dwellings.

Image credit: Fernando Guerra, Canon Ambassador

The original CAM center was designed by British architect Sir Leslie Martin and opened in 1983, housing one of the world’s most significant collections of modern and contemporary Portuguese art. The center sits within the wider grounds of Lisbon’s Gulbenkian Foundation, a multi-disciplinary campus of 1960’s buildings in an 18-acre woodland.

Image credit: Fernando Guerra, Canon Ambassador

Kuma’s new iteration of the center is defined by a 330-foot-long sweeping timber canopy. The canopy was in...

Take a look inside Snøhetta's newly opened Joslyn Art Museum expansion

2024-09-10T15:40:00-04:00

The Joslyn Art Museum celebrates its grand reopening today following a $100 million Snøhetta-led expansion project that established the new 42,000-square-foot Rhonda & Howard Hawks Pavilion on its campus in Omaha, Nebraska.

Photo © Nic Lehoux, courtesy Joslyn Art Museum

Founding partner Craig Dykers shared: "Our goal has been to provide a harmonious place for guests, art, and gathering that will become a vessel for inspiration and creativity to flourish."

Photo © Nic Lehoux, courtesy Joslyn Art Museum

The restoration of the museum's 1931 Art Deco Joslyn Building was another key aspect of the project. Alley Poyner Macchietto Architecture was integral to the design and execution of the new pavilion, which joins the Joslyn Building with Norman Foster's 1994 Suzanne & Walter Scott Pavilion via an atrium.

Photo © Nic Lehoux, courtesy Joslyn Art Museum

Th...

Snøhetta's Joslyn Art Museum expansion teases first photos ahead of September opening

2024-08-09T11:39:00-04:00

Work on Snøhetta's Joslyn Art Museum expansion in Omaha, Nebraska, is wrapping up ahead of an anticipated September 10th opening. Since our last update, the new 42,000-square-foot Rhonda & Howard Hawks Pavilion has finished construction. Founding partner Craig Dykers says it will “become a vessel for inspiration and creativity to flourish.”

Bird's-eye view rendering of the completed Joslyn Art Museum expansion. Rendering courtesy of Moare.

The project is part of a multi-billion investment into downtown Omaha to which the Joslyn serves as a key cultural anchor. The existing 1931 Art Deco Joslyn Building was also renovated through the project, which is valued at $100 million. Alley Poyner Macchietto Architecture is involved as a design partner.

Here are two more teaser photos the museum just released, showing details of the facade and the interior.

Image: © Nic Lehoux, courtesy of the Joslyn Art Museum.

...

MILLIØNS pays deference to I.M. Pei with new café space for the Everson Museum

2024-08-07T15:00:00-04:00

A new café space from MILLIØNS at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York, meant to showcase a 4,000-object donation from its namesake, Louise Rosenfield, is up and running inside I.M. Pei’s 54-year-old Brutalist masterwork.

Image: Iwan Baan

The project’s commission was won after an international competition organized by Syracuse University School of Architecture dean Michael A. Speaks in 2019. Coming out of the pandemic, the institution was looking to increase public access to its collection overall while finding an appropriate use for Rosenfield's ceramics collection gift. The rare bequest stipulated it would be made available for use by visitors in a reversal of museum policy.

Image: Iwan Baan

The Los Angeles-based studio’s intervention entailed adding a pair of triple-height glass towers that double as a visible collections storage facility and display cases to the building’s East Wing Mather Court area. The incorporation of these definitive 'curatorial' elements works t...

Hip Hop Architect Michael Ford tapped to design new Bronzeville Center for the Arts in Milwaukee

2024-08-06T12:45:00-04:00

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting that Hip Hop Architect Michael Ford will design the city’s new Bronzeville Center for the Arts for 2028. The 50,000-square-foot, $54.9 million project is set to take shape at a 3.4-acre former state Department of Natural Resources office with design and technical support from HGA.

The project, which follows Ford and BrandNu Design Studio's work on the new Hip Hop Museum in the South Bronx, New York, is meant to serve as the first home for the BCA after its formation in 2020. The firm's founder says the scope of his design will "both represent the rich history of the neighborhood and forecast its future."

Completed cultural sector projects valued at more than $8 billion in 2023, study shows

2024-08-05T19:38:00-04:00

The value of completed cultural projects worldwide in 2023 totaled $8.58 billion, and announced projects equaled another $5.62 billion, according to the latest Cultural Infrastructure Index from the industry group AEA Consulting. The accounting includes 192 completed projects that year, in addition to 198 announced projects through the end of December.

The most expensive among the completed projects was the $500 million REX-designed Perelman Performing Arts Center in New York City. The new Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville from BIG equaled that amount in the announced project category.

The majority of cultural projects (52.6% completed and 56.6% announced) were registered in the Museum/Gallery subcategory, followed by Performing Arts Center for completed projects and Multifunction Arts Venue for announced projects.

The $465 million Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education and Innovation at the American Museum of Natural History in New York by Studio Gang. Image: ©...

Snøhetta completes redesign of the Blanton Museum of Art grounds with rain-capturing shade structures and native plants

2024-07-17T14:31:00-04:00

Snøhetta has completed work on their $35 million redesign of The Blanton Museum of Art grounds for the University of Texas at Austin.

The debut of the New Ground Initiative comes at the end of a three-year revitalization that saw the Blanton continuously operate during construction. The 200,000-square-foot campus now has a greater permanent presence as the gateway between the university and city of Austin thanks to public art installations and key improvements to the existing landscape design and architecture.

Image courtesy Casey Dunn

Lead architects and UTSOA alumni Craig Dykers, John Newman, and Elaine Molinar were able to guide the project using their student experiences, resulting in an inclusive new space.

Image courtesy Casey Dunn

At the center of the project stands a previously completed intervention of petal-like 40-by-30-foot metallic shade structures that was designed to reconcile an open area now referred to as the Moody Patio. Besides providing protection from Texas's re...

Snøhetta shares updated construction photos for El Paso Children's Museum

2024-07-12T11:20:00-04:00

The El Paso Children's Museum in Texas from Snøhetta and Exigo Architecture is advancing toward completion later this summer. The four-story, 70,000-square-foot museum is part of El Paso’s Downtown Arts District and will serve the community as its first purpose-built children's museum when it officially opens to the public on August 10th.

Snøhetta says: "The development of La Nube — Spanish for ‘the cloud’ — was directly influenced by input from the community. During the master planning process, a recurring theme was 'Blue Sky Thinking.' The sky is limitless, undefined by borders and holds clouds that can take an infinite number of shapes. The sky connects us all, regardless of culture, language, age, or ability."

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Snøhetta (@snohetta)

The design utilizes repeated barrel vaults and a glass-wrapped rectilinear base to create a "cloud-like" composition distinct from the apparent firmament and mix of corporate architecture b...

Kengo Kuma's new Seoul audio museum opens as an 'architectural instrument'

2024-07-10T14:37:00-04:00

Kengo Kuma and Associates has inaugurated what could be this year’s most interesting new cultural project, the new Audeum (or Audio Museum) in Seoul, South Korea, following a two-year construction period.

The world’s first museum experience dedicated to sound is approximately 2.4 million square feet and supports sensory healing while offering visitors a unique experience of both its architecture and exhibitions in a design that's meant to evoke the forest canopy surroundings it appears to be a metallic natural outgrowth of.

Image courtesy Namsun Lee

The design team describes it as a "place where you can not only see but also experience sound firsthand. [...] it is not just a place to listen to sound; it is an architectural instrument that returns humans to a natural state, allowing them to experience the five senses of the body."

Image courtesy Yongbaek Lee

Image courtesy Namsun Lee

The idea for its establishment can be credited to Korean acoustics equipment s...

MAD updates construction progress on Hainan Science Museum before 2025 debut

2024-05-28T16:56:00-04:00

Ma Yansong/MAD Architects has posted a construction update for the Hainan Science Museum in China ahead of its anticipated 2025 opening. The vertically spiraling design works to combat the phenomenon of museum fatigue, appearing as though an emerging cloud bank while distributing spaces efficiently across five floors and a total of 46,530 square meters (500,800 square feet).

This will form a key part of the site's cultural component, contrasting the many sports stadium designs that surround it in coastal Haikou National Wetland Park. It mirrors MAD's previous efforts on the Wormhole Library located nearby on Haikou Bay. Another eye-catching design, the firm's ripped-facade One River North development in Denver (MAD's second completed residential project in the U.S.), also passed a major milestone recently as it nears its realization.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by MAD Architects (@madarchitects)

Converted grain silo opens as new art destination in southern Norway

2024-05-15T17:02:00-04:00

Norway’s new Kunstsilo Museum has opened to the public in the southern port city of Kristiansand.

The new home for the private collection of Nicolai Tangen is the product of a six-year transformation authored by Spanish studios Mestres Wåge Arquitectes, Mendoza Partida, and BAX in a former grain silo (hence the name) and integrates the Southern Norway Art Museum’s holdings seamlessly into one space that covers three floors and yields a total of 3,300 square meters (35,520 square feet) for exhibitions and cultural programming.

Photo: Alan Williams Photography, image courtesy Kunstsilo.

The overhaul of Arne Korsmo and Sverre Aasland’s original 1935 functionalist design evokes both the Tate Modern in London and Thomas Heatherwick’s popular 2017 reimagining of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, South Africa.

Photo: Alan Williams Photography, image courtesy Kunstsilo.

Inside, the collection of around 5,500 objects is presented in 25 galleries surrounding a large (6...

Following a Frank Gehry overhaul, the Philadelphia Museum of Art is hiring an exhibition designer

2024-04-24T17:28:00-04:00

Following last week’s look at an opening for a Deputy Director, Occupancy Management - Real Estate at the MTA Metropolitan Transportation Authority, we are using this week’s edition of our Job Highlights series to explore an open role on Archinect Jobs for an Exhibition Designer at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The role calls for an individual who will design special exhibitions, gallery projects, and gallery furnishings for the display of works of art in the museum. Specific tasks may include managing the design and documentation process for exhibitions, creating technical drawings and models of objects and spaces, and developing schedules for construction and object installation. Among the requirements for the role are model-making skills, design training and experience, and preferably a degree in art, architecture, or art history.

The museum's North Entrance, for the first time in decades, was restored to public use in 2019. Steve Hall © Hall + Merrick Photographers, 2019, cour...

Sam Lubell on cultural institutions’ newfound embrace of landscape architecture

2024-04-23T18:30:00-04:00

[...] such projects have fundamentally transformed in recent years, reflecting, among other things, seismic shifts in both museums’ priorities and the profession of landscape architecture, as well as a surge in interest in outdoor space because of the pandemic. The first rule: don’t dare call them gardens. These are sophisticated landscapes integrating — and enhancing — institutions’ missions while also encouraging education, sustainability and a much-needed sense of civic welcome.

Sam Lubell of the New York Times talks to Walter Hood, William Fain, and Kate Orff for a survey focused on the expanding role of landscape architecture in major American cultural sector projects.

He says: "The ascension of landscape in the museum world shows no signs of abating." Projects of note include the Hirshhorn Museum’s debated Hiroshi Sugimoto-led sculpture garden redesign, Studio-MLAand Frederick Fisher and Partners’ work for the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles, and the forthcoming Calder Gardens in Philadelphia from Piet Oudolf and Herzog & de Meuron.

"Museums are places where you can say something about the culture. Where we can begin to vet some of these things that we don’t want to talk about. It goes back to the idea of these being the new civic spaces, where honest conversations can be had," Walter Hood told him. (A look at his firm's contributions to the new International African American Museum in South Carolina by Moody Nolan and Pei Cobb Freed can be found ...

LACMA shares custom-built glass facade details in new spring construction update

2024-04-16T13:39:00-04:00

New updates have been shared recently by the Los Angeles Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), charting progress on the $750 million new David Geffen Galleries from Peter Zumthor that is expected to finish construction by the end of this year.

According to the museum's most recent April 5th update, interior walls and exterior glazing are being installed on the site’s western side, facing north to Wilshire Boulevard. Work on the building’s MEPs is now underway, and the concrete pour for the roof decks has been completed to the east side of the site. Formwork, rebar installation, and concrete pours for the roof decks are also advancing on the Spaulding Lot.

This follows the March 8th update that detailed the removal of the site’s prominent tower crane. LACMA has yet to release a public opening date. (A recent look inside the project with its contractor Clark Construction can be found here.)

Image courtesy LACMA

Also of interest are the 243 individual custom-made glass facade components...

Take a look inside Allied Works' Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State ahead of June opening

2024-04-11T12:15:00-04:00

Allied Works’ collaboration with Reed Hilderbrand for the new Palmer Museum of Art at Pennsylvania State University is closing in on its June 1st opening. The firm has shared new photos previewing its work ahead of the inauguration, which will culminate a two-year construction period for a cost of $85 million.

The 73,000-square-foot building is defined by interlocking sandstone-clad pavilions contained within double-height volumes. These allow for unique spatial variations in each of the 20 new galleries, highlighting the diversity of its collection to visitors.

Image: Jeremy Bittermann/JSBA

An overhead skybridge — the new Dr. Keiko Miwa Ross Gateway — links both wings while establishing panoramic vistas of the university's Arboretum and H.O. Smith Botanic Garden outside. —

Image: Jeremy Bittermann/JSBA

Small exterior courtyards are created by the design, which is similar in concept to Allied Works' 2008 Dutchess County Guest House in upstate New York and the firm's shortlisted compet...

Safdie Architects shares construction update for Crystal Bridges Museum expansion

2024-04-04T12:41:00-04:00

The multi-year expansion of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is moving forward with an anticipated completion in 2025. Safdie Architects has shared photos of its construction progress via an Instagram post published Wednesday, April 3rd, from the site in Bentonville, Arkansas.

The project adds two new galleries worth a total of 100,000 square feet to the campus, increasing the size of its existing exhibition spaces by 65% while adding another 50% to its overall footprint. Safdie has been working on a master plan for the site, which includes the original pavilions he completed in 2011, for over 25 years.

Watch him speak with the museum's founder, Alice Walton, about its design here.

The project will culminate as his second American museum expansion following his work for the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts in 2003.

Next up, the firm is working on a new ski resort/residential concept in Vermont with PWP Landscape Architecture.

View this post on Instagram ...

Snøhetta's 'whimsical children's museum' takes shape in El Paso

2024-04-02T11:52:00-04:00

New construction photographs published by Snøhetta via social media show substantial progress on the El Paso Children's Museum, designed with Exigo Architecture.

We first reported on the scheme in 2018 when Snøhetta won the competition for the project. In 2020, the firm unveiled a completed design for the 70,000-square-foot museum, which will sit in El Paso's Downtown Arts district.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Snøhetta (@snohetta)

Through an unorthodox use of geometries, the building seeks to distinguish itself from the rest of the local skyline. The rectilinear base is wrapped in glass, allowing for natural light and interior views for the public on the outside. A succession of barrel vaults, visible in the construction photographs, add a rhythmic quality to the structure.

Diamond Schmitt presents New Brunswick Museum design

2024-03-31T08:00:00-04:00

Canadian practice Diamond Schmitt Architects, along with Associate Architect EXP, has unveiled the design of the new home of the New Brunswick Museum (NBM) in Saint John, New Brunswick.

Canada’s oldest continuing museum, the NBM’s footprint is set to expand, with its research work and exhibitions united within one sustainable, decarbonized facility.

Rendering by PLAY-TIME Courtesy of Diamond Schmitt.

The design integrates the east wing of the museum’s historic Collections and Research Center and adds five new wings to the north. The new facility will span 134,000 square feet. A new main entrance on street level will lead visitors into a multi-story, public great room. In addition to its use for the museum, this space will host community gatherings, festivals, events, and receptions. It will feature a boutique, café, ticketing services, and a public “Introduction to New Brunswick” gallery. Exhibition galleries on the second floor will overlook the great room.

Rendering by PLAY-TIME...

The Broad taps Diller Scofidio + Renfro again for major expansion

2024-03-27T18:33:00-04:00

Big news for architecture and art fans alike coming out of Los Angeles today, where The Broad just announced plans for a major expansion project to the tune of $100 million.

The reveal of the new proposal, which will reportedly increase the available gallery space by 70%, comes nearly ten years after the existing building opened to much fanfare on Downtown LA's Grand Avenue arts and culture corridor in 2015 to allow free public access to the vast art collection of philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad.

For the design of the expansion, the museum has commissioned the original architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) again, whose initial renderings hint at a continuation of their "veil and vault" concept.

"The exterior of the expansion echoes the surface appearance of the vault — as if this core had been exposed and 'unveiled' — symbolically expressing The Broad’s commitment to access while playfully inverting the visual vocabulary of the current building," the architects describe...

SO – IL presents designs for their new Williams College Museum of Art expansion

2024-03-08T13:48:00-05:00

SO – IL’s plans for an extension of the Williams College Museum of Art in western Massachusetts have been made public as the institution prepares to house its important collection in a free-standing and purpose-built new home for the first time in its 100-year history.

The project will enhance the museum’s mission as an on-campus educational resource while creating a new gateway between the college and the community of Williamstown.

SO – IL says they envision their plan to culminate in 2027. When it does, the project will yield a total of 15,000 square feet worth of new gallery spaces in a three-story structure that houses a 6,400-square-foot study center, auditorium, art studios, and a café. Reed Hilderbrand will be included to complete the project's landscaping. The project was announced in 2021 following a two-year programming study that was made in consultation with TenBerke through the pandemic.

Image credit: Jeudi.Wang, courtesy SO–IL and the Williams College Museum of Art

Ref...

Art and science come together as a comprehensive whole in EskewDumezRipple's new Bruce Museum expansion

2024-03-07T13:00:00-05:00

The Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut, has shared photos of its recent expansion project that was completed by EskewDumezRipple in April of 2023 at a cost of $67 million.

Drawing inspiration from coastal New England granite quarries, the project added a total of 42,000 square feet via the new William L. Richter Art Wing. The expansion was undertaken to allow the museum’s art and science holdings to expand and be better interpreted as a coherent whole.

The design also created an easier access point to its grounds, replete with an additional landscape component from Reed Hilderbrand.

Photo: Tim Hursley

"We can host the community in a way we’ve never been able to before," the Bruce Museum's Executive Director, Robert Wolterstorff, who is also trained as an architectural historian, explains. "In the past, we had no permanent collections galleries. By adding these spaces, the museum is able to showcase works that local collectors have generously donated, providing...

Snøhetta's Joslyn Art Museum expansion set to open in September

2024-02-26T14:06:00-05:00

The Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska, has shared new renderings and construction photos to go along with the announcement of the impending completion of a two-year, $100 million expansion project designed by Snøhetta and Alley Poyner Macchietto Architecture.

The design establishes the new Rhonda & Howard Hawks Pavilion on campus while adding another 40% worth of gallery spaces to house the museum’s fast-growing collection. Joslyn’s CEO Jack Becker complimented the firms’ "sensitive and imaginative approach" in planning the 42,000-square-foot extension, which is one part of the broad-ranging reinvestment the state and other private entities are making into downtown over the next decades.

Rendering courtesy of Moare

A pink-colored aggregate was added to pre-cast panels on the pavilion’s exterior, referencing the marble materials used in the facades of the Joslyn’s other existing structures from 1931 and 1994. This trio of buildings welcomes the public via a new entrance made at Da...

Álvaro Siza's self-named Serralves Museum expansion opens in Portugal

2024-02-19T12:28:00-05:00

The Serralves Foundation in Porto, Portugal, has shared photos of its recently inaugurated new wing designed by and named for the country’s beloved Pritzker Prize-winning architect, Álvaro Siza.

The 45,000-square-foot expansion is the fifth building designed by Siza for the foundation after the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art (1999), Manoel de Oliveira Cinema House (2019), Gardeners’ House (2021), and the restored Serralves Art Déco Villa (2021).

"With a wing dedicated to the Permanent Collection and Architecture, the Serralves Museum is more than ever an institution where the present is fully activated and where the recent past is settled and decanted. It allows the institution to fully take responsibility for its history and legacy, as well as for its role as the leading institution in Portugal dedicated to the history and the present of contemporary art and culture," Director Philippe Vergne stated.

Photo: FG+SG

The new wing was realized in Serralves Park to the western side...

Meier Partners completes Sorol Art Museum in South Korea

2024-01-30T18:43:00-05:00

Meier Partners has shared news of the recent completion of its Sorol Art Museum design in Gangneung, South Korea. The 336,500-square-foot project is meant to provide space for an immersive dialogue between Korean artists and the outside world and is the firm’s first completed work since its 2021 restructuring.

The building's internal structure is defined by a dual concept that arranges space into introverted and extroverted inter-dynamics based on the aesthetic theory of Korean Confucian philosophy. According to the architects, the external form utilizes the hillside’s natural topography to present the art inside on a pedestal to visitors in a way that also establishes the connection between nature and architecture as another core tenet of their experiences.

Image courtesy Meier Partners/Yongbaek Lee

Curators will have the option of controlling the gradations of light sources, both natural and artificial, inside the large skylit main exhibition space and smaller galleries. In a proj...

Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios wins re-tendered bid for International Slavery Museum revamp in Liverpool

2024-01-23T19:04:00-05:00

National Museums Liverpool (NML) has named Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios as the replacement for Adjaye Associates on the design team for the new International Slavery Museum and Maritime Museum.

The opportunity to replace Adjaye on the project came after the museum cut ties with his firm last summer following the revelation of sexual misconduct allegations in the Financial Times that preceded a string of high-profile project cancellations in the United States, the UK, and Saudi Arabia.

The NML redevelopment, which was first announced in 2021, has since increased in cost to £58 million (or about $73.5 million USD). Work will now begin once more from the RIBA Plan of Work scale's stage 3 (Spatial Coordination) through to the completion stage 7. The NML says this will entail adding an entirely new entrance inside the Martin Luther King Jr. building and additional major renovations to the site’s Hartley Pavilion.

Previously on Archinect: National Museums Liverpool re-tenders Slavery Mu...

MAD designs Chinese waterfront arts center as a ‘gentle ripple by the lake’

2024-01-04T11:35:00-05:00

MAD Architects has designed a waterfront arts center in China’s Foshan City described as a “gentle ripple by the lake.” When completed in 2029, the Nanhai Art Center will cover an area of 640,000 square feet, housing a grand theater, a museum, and a sports center.

Image credit: MAD Architects

The scheme has been conceived as a “continuous wave of water,” with the three main buildings sitting underneath a floating canopy comprised of a white, translucent ETFE membrane. The resulting blurring of outdoor and indoor spaces seeks to emphasize the prominence of the nearby lake in the scheme, encouraging the local community to embrace the waterfront as a part of the scheme’s cultural function.

Image credit: MAD Architects

“The traditional culture of Nanhai is in the drum beat and boat drift during the dragon festival boat race and in the kung-fu in the lion dance,” MAD founder Ma Yansong about the site’s context. “Watching them, you can feel the dynamic vibrant, and innovative spirit from an...

Plans for new LACMA-backed Las Vegas art museum emerge

2023-12-27T08:00:00-05:00

Around three years after the Nevada Museum of Art (NMA) in Reno suspended its plans to move forward with a Las Vegas branch of the museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the foundation of the philanthropist Elaine P. Wynn have announced an unprecedented partnership to launch a new museum in the city called the Las Vegas Museum of Art (LVMA).

As The Art Newspaper reported, plans for a new Las Vegas Museum of Art have the approximately 60,000-90,000-square-foot cultural facility commence in 2028 and cost around $150 million to construct in five-acre Symphony Park. LACMA is supporting the effort, which will (hopefully) fill the void left after the first Las Vegas Museum of Art closed its doors in 2009 over a lack of funding. Backers now have until 2025 to submit a design proposal and project timeline to the city.

“Our efforts to work with local and regional museums to share our collections and programs to larger and more diverse audiences are a priority in this joint effort,” a spokesperson for LACMA told TAN. “Las Vegas is currently the only city among the 30 largest in the U.S. to lack a standalone art museum [that is not a member of American Alliance of Museums]. It promises to be a valuable addition to the city and the cultural landscape of the region.”

No architects have been named to the project at this time.

...

Allied Works' Palmer Museum of Art is set for a 2024 opening at Penn State

2023-12-14T14:21:00-05:00

The Allied Works-designed Palmer Museum of Art expansion project at Pennsylvania State University has shared new photos of its construction progress to go along with an announced opening date of June 1 next year.

Reed Hilderbrand is coordinating with the firm to deliver the landscaped portion of the LEED Silver-certified design. The project doubles the museum’s existing footprint by adding a new 73,000-square-foot building with 20 new galleries, a café, education, research, and events spaces situated amongst the 370-acre university Arboretum and serviced by a sculpture path and outdoor terraces.

Dale Chihuly’s site-specific sculptural commission, “Lupine Blue Persian Wall,” will be debuted as an anchor that welcomes visitors to the main access point and is framed by the museum’s feature staircase.

Photo by Jeremy Bittermann/JSBA, courtesy of Allied Works.

Locally quarried sandstone cladding produces a naturalistic effect on the exterior of each of the building’s interlocking pavilio...