Archinect - News

Tate Liverpool announces $34 million overhaul effort

2022-01-10T13:31:00-05:00

One of the UK’s most popular art institutions is inviting architects to take to the drawing boards for a new redesign of the Tate’s Liverpool campus.

The museum is now officially looking for an architect to spearhead its £25 million ($34 million) refurbishment announced last week after the effort finally received £10 million ($13.6 million) in public funding in October.

The overhaul will reportedly yield an increase in usability as well as enhancements of the site’s visual presence among the waterfront and Albert Dock complex. A brief provided by the museum also details a desire to create a plan for the galleries that is both “flexible and inviting” and promises to address core areas like wayfinding and ventilation in a manner that will have it fit for use for another thirty years.

According to a press statement, the Tate’s trustees are “seeking an architect to reimagine the gallery spaces to meet the scale and ambition of today's most exciting artists, while creating social space...

London-based spatial practice Cooking Sections uses architecture, ecology, and geopolitics to reshape the public's relationship to food cycles

2021-04-07T15:11:00-04:00

Alon Schwabe and Daniel Fernández Pascual of the London-based studio Cooking Sections explore food systems through architecture, ecology, visual arts, and geopolitics.

Featured in the second issue of Archinect's print publication Ed Issue 2, The Architecture of Disaster, the duo discussed their project CLIMAVORE: On Tidal Zones. Using a lightweight installation to explore the changing nature of Loch Portree's waters in Scotland, the pair explains their goals to adapt to changing ecosystems through food and architecture. A project that is both a "performance project and a form of responsive eating—a model Schwabe and Fernández have developed as a possible method for adaptation to the precarious conditions of climate change."

Featured on Archinect: Cooking Sections Explains Their Efforts to Adapt to Changing Ecosystems Through Food and Architecture. Photograph by Ruth Clark.

Recently, Schwabe and Pascual debuted their latest project, Salmon: A Red Herring, at the Tate Britain. Part o...

Tate St Ives named UK’s Museum of the Year 2018

2018-07-06T13:29:00-04:00

Tate St Ives has been announced as Art Fund Museum of the Year 2018, the largest and most prestigious museum prize in the world. Anne Barlow, director of Tate St Ives, was presented with the £100,000 prize by artist Isaac Julien and the ‘world’s best teacher’ Andria Zafirakou at an award ceremony at the V&A, London.

"Tate St Ives tells the story of the artists who have lived and worked in Cornwall in an international context," said Stephen Deuchar, chair of the judges. "The new extension to the gallery is deeply intelligent and breathtakingly beautiful, providing the perfect stage for a curatorial programme that is at once adventurous, inclusive and provocative. The judges admired an architect and gallery team who devoted some 12 years to this transformational change, consulting with the local community all the way."

The group of finalist museums also included Brooklands Museum (Weybridge), Ferens Art Gallery (Hull), Glasgow Women’s Library, and The Postal Museum (London).

Herzog and de Meuron in conversation with Rowan Moore

2016-05-17T14:36:00-04:00

As Herzog explains, piling some refined Swiss biscuits on the table in front of him to illustrate his point, an earlier design envisaged stacked-up glass cubes, but the material was too similar to the developers’ stuff. “We realised that in order to survive we have to strengthen it,” he says [..] Yet the precedent of the original Tate Modern – also severe on the outside, lively inside – shows that a building doesn’t have to gurn and wheedle to be popular.

"In this and other works, Herzog and De Meuron like to present a protestant moment of denial before pleasure, to forbid before welcoming, to be severe before generous. It is part of their worldview, different from most architects’, in which delight and beauty co-exist with more troubling or mysterious aspects of existence."

In related news:

Tate Museum Creates Minecraft World Inspired by Famous Paintings

2014-12-01T15:57:00-05:00

Tate Worlds are exciting Minecraft ‘maps’ that present virtual environments inspired by artworks from Tate’s collection. The maps allow players of Minecraft to explore a range of paintings and sculpture, undertaking various activities and challenges that relate to the themes of the artworks, or exploring how they were made. Tate has teamed up with some of Minecraft’s best known mapmakers to create these virtual artworks, offering a unique combination of art, history and adventure.

The first two maps were released by the museum on November 24th and were based on two famous paintings of urban settings: Andre Derain’s 1906 painting of London, The Pool of London, and Christopher Nevinson’s 1920 painting of New York, Soul of the Soulless City.

André Derain, the influential Fauvist painter, depicted the bustling port of the Thames at the turn of the century. In the new Minecraft version of the painting, the bright colors employed by the painter are reproduced on an immersive scale. Gamers can wander the imaginary city and explore such historic sites as the Tower of London.

Christopher Nevin's futurist-influenced painting Soul of the Soulless City depicts New York in the 1920s, as it began to emerge both economically and architecturally as a modern metropolis. Fittingly, the experience of the corresponding Minecraft maps begins on a train that hurtles you into the city, just as Nevin's painting utilizes train tracks to convey its convoluted sense of perspectival moti...