Archinect - News

Sou Fujimoto designs Pace Gallery Tokyo expansion inside Heatherwick's Azabudai Hills development

2023-09-05T16:57:00-04:00

The new home of the Pace Gallery in Tokyo will feature interior spaces designed by Sou Fujimoto inside a three-story portion of Heatherwick Studio’s exciting new Azabudai Hills development, according to plans revealed today by the gallery.

The total 5,500-square-foot design includes some 3,000 square feet of exhibition spaces split between the first and second floors of the gallery. A third floor will also include a private terrace and sculptural garden connected to the landscape component of the 20-acre site, which sits prominently at the nexus of several other cultural destinations in the city’s busy Toranomon commercial district.

Rendering © DBOX for Mori Building Co., Ltd

The designer of the 2013 Serpentine Pavilion and Musashino Art University Museum and Library will deliver a space that is evocative of his personal explorations and approach to architecture.

Rendering © DBOX for Mori Building Co., Ltd

Pace says it has been interested in a Japanese expansion since at least the la...

Dulwich Picture Gallery to undergo most significant redevelopment in decades, designed by Carmody Groarke and Kim Wilkie

2023-08-10T11:35:00-04:00

London’s Southwark Council has granted approval for the redevelopment of Dulwich Picture Gallery and its gardens. Led by architects Carmody Groarke and landscape artist Kim Wilkie, the project will be the biggest redevelopment of the past two decades for the venue, which originally opened in 1817 as the UK’s first public art gallery.

Image credit: Carmody Groarke

The redevelopment will see a new timber pavilion constructed in the gallery's gardens. Characterized by circular window openings and a timber reciprocal frame roof, the pavilion is intended to serve as a “warm, tactile space for children and families to enjoy.”

Model image credit: Richard Davies

The square form of the pavilion will be angled at 45 degrees to the historic gallery to “reinforce the relationship of the pavilion with the landscape and the two entrances to the site.” Inside, the reciprocal frame roof will filter natural daylight into the center of the cruciform plan, while natural copper canopies will “provide pla...

Formation Association designs new west coast HQ for Phillips in LA

2023-04-03T18:58:00-04:00

The west coast operation of London-based auction house Phillips has a new home courtesy of Los Angeles’ Formation Association.

Their West Hollywood design was unveiled recently and features a remodeled series of existing structures that includes three showrooms, a covered patio, and offices set amongst a bespoke covering of ficus trees.

Image © Eric Staudenmaier

A rounded marquee greets visitors to the main showroom’s Santa Monica Boulevard entrance, punctuated by an overhead oculus and encased in a heavy gray dash stucco material that conjures the "textures of workaday local building materials in a sculpted manner [while] lending a distinctly southern California identity to the architectural treatment."

Image © Eric Staudenmaier

Inside, a sequence of light-filled gallery spaces begins with the largest Showroom A, which is framed by a soffit ceiling and features a second oculus that plays host to an exposed si...

Explore SANAA's Art Gallery of New South Wales expansion ahead of its grand opening

2022-11-30T15:35:00-05:00

Sydney's highly anticipated Art Gallery of New South Wales expansion will open its doors on Saturday, December 3, expecting the arrival of 15,000 people who have already registered to visit.

Designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning duo Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA, the new project is set to be the city's largest "cultural development since the dramatic opening of its Opera House nearly 50 years ago," as reported on Archinect back in May 2022 when updated project renderings were released.

Image © Iwan Baan/Courtesy of SANAA | The Art Gallery NSW.

Sejima and Nishizawa expressed their gratitude for the opportunity to work on the project. They shared with the press, "It has been a wonderful honor to design such an important public building in Sydney. Working closely with the Art Gallery of New South Wales team, we aimed to design an art museum building that is harmonious with its surroundings, one that breathes with the city, the park, and the harbor. We hope it will be a sp...

Scott Brownrigg's Rhondda Tunnel will transform a disused railway portal into the world's longest digital art space

2022-07-15T11:30:00-04:00

An imposing new cultural project will transform what was once a railway link in the Welsh countryside into what London-based studio Scott Browrigg says will be the world’s longest digital art space once it is completed in a few years.

By remaking the last vestiges of a 130-year-old abandoned rail tunnel formerly pegged to become a walking path and bike trail, the new arts-centered scheme will deliver an in-demand tourist destination that connects the two communities of Blaencwm and Blaengwynfi located at either end.

Image courtesy Scott Brownrigg

One might say this is a real windfall for the critically-important (especially in terms of an exhibition settings) area of wayfinding. The design made the cut for the recently-announced 2022 WAF shortlist in the Future Project: Culture category and will strive for a BREEAM Excellent rating, according to the firm.

To the east, the tunnel’s entrance will be defined by either a land art referencing hotel, while in its west, on the Blaengwynfi s...

One of Oscar Niemeyer's last drawings to be realized at Château La Coste in France

2022-04-07T19:24:00-04:00

France’s Château La Coste will make history this summer with the realization of one of Oscar Niemeyer’s last architectural drawings.

Set idyllically amongst the Château’s 500-acre estate in one of the country’s most significant wine regions, the latest in a series of pavilions will play host to a 1,250-square-foot art gallery and 80-seat cylindrical auditorium.

Image © Stéphane Aboudaram, WE ARE CONTENT(S), 2022

The project was initiated in 2010 and took more than a year to perfect, resulting in a striking final gift to his adopted home and its age-old craft, which Niemeyer considered a sacred and essential human activity.

Image © Stéphane Aboudaram, WE ARE CONTENT(S), 2022

Visitors will enter the pavilion’s glass facade across from a shallow reflecting pool that provides a perfect frame for the structure’s signature curved form and surrounding Provencial terroir. Niemeyer worked alongside founder Paddy McKillen and his grandson-in-law, architect Jair Valera, to select the site and ...

BoND’s new Company Gallery space offers a unique showcase for Queer artists and for themselves

2021-12-16T12:33:00-05:00

One of the flashiest openings in the art world this fall came not in the form of a suite of salable oil paintings or an of-the-moment sculptural showcase but rather from a one-time dry goods storage space which has been converted into the new home of New York’s Company Gallery by an upstart duo called BoND.

The duo is formed by Noam Dvir and Daniel Rauchwerger, partners in business and in life, who say their design was inspired by several different elements of the history of the city’s Queer arts community for whom Company was founded seven years ago.

Photo: Nick Glimenakis. Image courtesy BoND.

The gallery’s roster features a veritable who’s who of hot young artists like Jonathan Lyndon Chase and Raúl de Nieves and was looking for a space to help inaugurate “a jump to a different chapter” with the help of some highly skilled hands from inside that same community.

Photo: Nick Glimenakis. Image courtesy BoND.

“It was almost like a political discussion a little bit, and I think that we ...

Signal's makeover of historic Fort Worden offers Puget Sound a new arts center

2021-10-13T18:14:00-04:00

Whence a military installation, now an art gallery. A new adaptive reuse project from Signal Architecture + Research has transformed a one-time coastal artillery fortification in Port Townsend, Washington into an eight-acre arts compound with accommodations for studios, exhibition space, and a new artist residency called Makers Square.

Image courtesy SIGNAL

The project took three of Fort Worden’s warehouse buildings currently listed on the National Register of Historic Places and remade what began a harbinger of violence into a historically sensitive space for creative expression.

Image courtesy Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission

The old quartermasters’ warehouse is now a gallery space complete with new double-height ceilings and a gabled roofline. Two writers’ studios occupy an expanded attic area, and the basement has been transformed into a headquarters for the local station KPTZ with the help of engineering partner Arup. The two remaining buildings became ideal canva...

Frank Gehry is once again exhibiting new sculptures at Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles

2021-07-08T17:43:00-04:00

A new examination of Frank Gehry’s sculptural work is swimming into Los Angeles this summer.

Spinning Tales will showcase new and old pieces from the architect at the Gagosian Gallery. Gehry has been very active in the art world recently, using this latest show to piggyback off of the much-anticipated opening of his new LUMA Tower in Arles this past week.

The 92-year-old Gehry has been a frequent exhibitor at the gallery’s Beverly Hills outpost with eight shows since 1999.

Spinning Tales, 2021, installation view. © Frank Gehry. Photo: Joshua White. Courtesy of Gagosian

The exhibition combines new works from the Canadian-American architect with a trio of sculptures that trace their beginnings to a 1980s commission Gehry received from the Formica Corporation. Gehry had at the time been tasked with using a plastic laminate called ColorCore. After shattering a piece of ColorCore in his workshop, an allusion became clear: Gehry eventually glued the scale-like shards together over wire arm...

National Gallery in London to pursue £25m renovation

2021-02-16T11:22:00-05:00

London’s National Gallery is embarking on a £25m-£30m project to upgrade its building, to be partly completed in early 2024 to celebrate its 200th anniversary. There will be three key elements: upgrading the lobby of the Sainsbury Wing, creating a new research centre and improving outdoor space on the edge of Trafalgar Square.

The Sainsbury Wing, designed by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, will have obvious limitations to what work can be done, given its Grade I listed status. According to The Art Newspaper, the work will be phased over five years. The first step will be to select a design team, which will be led by an architectural firm. A call for interested design teams is due to be sent out today, after which five teams will be shortlisted, reports The Arts Newspaper.

Art Gallery of Nova Scotia names winning team for international design competition

2020-11-19T13:34:00-05:00

The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (AGNS) has announced the team of KPMB Architects with Omar Gandhi Architect, Jordan Bennett Studio, Elder Lorraine Whitman (NWAC), Public Work and Transsolar as winners of the international design competition for the new Art Gallery of Nova Scotia and Waterfront Arts District.

"Congratulations to the winning design team on their outstanding proposal for a new iconic Art Gallery of Nova Scotia," said Premier Stephen McNeil in a statement. "As a province, we recognize the importance of inclusive public spaces connected to the arts. Art and culture help tell the story of who we are as Nova Scotians. The new gallery will reflect the importance of art and culture to our lives, our communities, and our economy. I also want to thank The Sobey Foundation for their very generous donation to this project."

As part of the unveiling of the design for the New Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Donald R. Sobey Foundation, with The Sobey Foundation, announced a $10 mil...

Marciano Art Foundation building to become Gagosian Gallery outpost

2020-08-03T14:04:00-04:00

Following the abrupt closure of the Marciano Art Foundation complex in Los Angeles last year, international art house Gagosian Gallery has inked a plan to take over 13,000 square feet of the former museum building.

Situated within a gargantuan former Scottish Rite Temple designed by architect Millard Sheets in 1961, the Gagosian outpost will become the largest facility operated by the gallery in Los Angeles, ArtNews reports. In 2015 the temple was converted for the Marciano Art Foundation by wHY; It is unclear if the firm is undertaking any additional design efforts for the latest gallery conversion. In 2016, wHY designed a 4,500-square-foot flagship Gagosian Gallery facility in San Francisco.

According to the report, Gagosian will take up the temple's Theater Gallery space, a ground level area that was once used to stage elaborate performances and plays by the Scottish Rite group during its original use.

The Marciano Art Foundation shut down in November 2019 following an unsucces...

Anna Neimark fills SCI-Arc gallery with "Rude forms"

2020-01-31T17:09:00-05:00

Anna Neimark, Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) Design Faculty and co-founder of architecture firm First Office, is presenting Rude forms among us, an architectural installation and exhibition taking place at the SCI-Arc Gallery in Los Angeles.

The exhibition is presented in collaboration with Frédérique Gaillard, PhD, Curatorial Assistant and Head of the Photo Library at the Natural History Museum in Toulouse, France, the Muséum d’histoire naturelle de Toulouse, and The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts Alliance Française de Los Angeles.

According to exhibition text, the installation offers "a slight release from the present" and will highlight a collection of photographs on loan from the Natural History Museum in Toulouse taken by 19th century photographer Eugène Trutat of the Dolmen de Vaour, a "stone monument" arranged out of four rocky slabs. Inside the exhibition hall, Neimark has created a Dolmen of her own, this one "blank and...

David Chipperfield completes a major new addition to Berlin's Museum Island

2019-07-09T13:12:00-04:00

After nearly twenty years of planning, David Chipperfield Architects have completed James Simon Galerie, a major new addition to Berlin's Museum Island. Sharing a small plot of land with world-famous cultural institutions, including Karl Friedrich Schinkel's Altes Museum and Friedrich August Stüler's Neues Museum (for which Chipperfield provided an interior restoration in 2009), James Simon Galerie is a $150 million addition suitable for welcoming the throngs of tourists and locals alike that visit the island each year.

Exterior of James Simon Galerie. Photo by Simon Menges.

The Galerie is a stunning example of what critic Oliver Wainwright has called the "restrained opulence" typical of David Chipperfield's work, beginning with the spindly proportions of the white marble columns towards the entrance and followed by the monumental scale of the entryway. According to the firm, "the architectural language of the James-Simon-Galerie adopts existing elements of the Museum Island, prima...

Canadian-based architecture firm KPMB Architects showcase how architects design for art

2019-05-14T13:52:00-04:00

Museums and galleries all over the world house some of the most valuable and sought after art pieces. Not only do these structures house art, but they also create the environment for art to live and be experienced with its surroundings. Canadian-based architecture firm KPMB Architects collaborated with Régis Côté et associés and Architecture49 to help transform and build two new museum experiences in Canada. With an emphasis in exhibiting and developing a new building for prominent art pieces and collections, KPMB and Régis Côté et associés worked on the Ottawa Art Gallery (OAG) expansion and Arts Court Redevelopment. The new mixed-use building functions as a museum as well as a cultural, civic center in the heart of Ottawa. According to the design team, the goal of the project was to "create a destination for patrons of the arts as well as provide an identity for the OAG and the other arts organizations currently housed in the Arts Court."

Ottawa Art Gallery (OAG) Expansion and Ar...

Today Sotheby's unveils its newly expanded and redesigned New York galleries by OMA

2019-05-03T19:15:00-04:00

Today Sotheby's unveils its redesigned and newly-expanded gallery located in their global headquarters in New York. In collaboration with Sotheby's by Shohei Shigematsu and OMA, the redesign features updated exhibition spaces that provide optimal spatial layouts for their vast art collections. Comprised of 40 public galleries and nine private sales salons, the new space has become the premier location for art exhibitions in terms of scale, quality, flexibility, and scope. Able to accommodate a wide range of art at varying scales, the new space increases Sotheby's exhibition size from 67,000 to more than 90,000 square feet, which is an expansion equivalent to two acres.

Sotheby's NY by OMA. Image © Brett Beyer Photography

CEO of Sotheby's Tad Smith shares, "Our ambition was to co...

Rothko Chapel closes for its big overhaul

2019-02-28T13:22:00-05:00

The Rothko Chapel in Houston, founded in 1971 by the art patrons John and Dominique de Menil as an ecumenical site for both reflection and activism, will be closing on Monday for the rest of the year for the first phase of a $30 million restoration and campus expansion by Architecture Research Office.

New York-based firm Architecture Research Office (ARO) was selected in 2016 to be in charge of the restoration work.

"During the closure, work inside the Chapel will include modifications to the entryway and vestibule, enhanced audio, security and fire systems, replacement of the existing skylight and updates to the overall lighting design to allow for heightened illumination and an unimpeded interaction with the artwork," reads the announcement about the temporary closure, beginning Monday, March 4, on the Chapel's website.

Image via Wikipedia

"These upgrades will ensure more access and engagement with Mark Rothko’s extraordinary paintings and will improve the visitor experience as a whole. These preservation efforts will bring the experience of the Chapel closer to the founders’ and artist’s original intentions."

The building is scheduled to reopen in winter 2019.

OMA reorganizes Sotheby’s New York City HQ as a four-story art department store with 40 galleries

2019-02-22T14:23:00-05:00

The art market is rapidly changing, and even the big players aren't immune to the need for adjustment: auction power house Sotheby's today revealed a few conceptual glimpses into a dramatic reorganization and expansion of its NYC headquarters at 1334 York Avenue.

The redesign, led by OMA Partner Shohei Shigematsu and Associate Christy Cheng, optimizes the currently inefficient, sprawling distribution of locations of employee, client-serving and back of house spaces throughout the massive building; increasing the available exhibition space from 67,000 to more than 90,000 square feet—the equivalent of two acres.

Aerial sketch. Credit: OMA New York.

"Our conceptual proposal clarifies the overall flow through the building by restacking and consolidating complementary programs while freeing up space for improved connectivity and openness—new retail, gallery and client spaces span the first four floors to better engage clients and visitors," explains the project description.

F1 Lobby. Cr...

The Muzeum Susch is an "alpine chalet, primitive grotto and Bond villain’s lair in one"

2019-01-22T15:59:00-05:00

In this beguiling new gallery in the Engadin valley, it is hard to tell where nature ends and artifice begins. It is located on the site of a 12th-century monastery, in a rambling complex of buildings... The young architects Chasper Schmidlin and Lukas Voellmy have concocted a magical place where the historic fabric, contemporary art and the raw geology of the landscape collide.

Exterior. Photograph: (c) Studio Stefano Graziani, courtesy Muzeum Susch, Art Stations Foundation CH

Though the outside of this gallery in the remote Eastern section of Switzerland appears perfectly ordinary, stepping past its entrance reveals a world of difference.

Interior. Photograph: Studio Stefano Graziani/courtesy Muzeum Susch and Art Stations Foundation CH

Muzeum Susch, one of the newest galleries in Switzerland, has been receiving attention for its novel approach towards the conflation of natural rock formations and exhibition space. 68-year-old Grażyna Kulczyk conceived of the private museum after building her first in a former brewery in her hometown of Poznań, Poland.

Given the natural irregularity of the walls, the space will primarily exhibit floor sculptures, including those from Magdalena Abakanowicz, Sara Masüger and Adrián Villar Rojas.

“Quietly innovative”: A closer look at the new Menil Drawing Institute by Johnston Marklee

2018-11-08T18:08:00-05:00

Placed at the heart of the historic Menil Collection in Houston, Johnston Marklee's long-anticipated Menil Drawing Institute opened to the public last Saturday. As the fifth art building to be constructed on the iconic 30-acre campus, the approximately 30,000 square-foot Menil Drawing Institute showcases the expansive drawing collection of Dominique and John Menil. Johnston Marklee collaborated with landscape architects Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates on the $40 million project.

The Menil Drawing Institute is the first facility of its kind to be dedicated to the acquisition, study, exhibition, conservation, and storage of modern and contemporary drawings. Designed at an intimate scale, the MDI has a low-lying, elongated form that not only complements its park-like surroundings and nearby historic structures, but also signals potential future growth.

Open for less than a week, the MDI has received generally positive reactions so far. “[Johnston Marklee has] succeeded brilliantly, ...

Sick of the white cube? This Hong Kong gallery is going all black

2016-12-13T12:42:00-05:00

[Empty Gallery] is entirely black—black walls, black floors, black fittings. When you first enter, it is completely, utterly dark. It is only when you reach the first of the main art spaces that dim lighting illuminates the works on display. “Hong Kong is so fast; the language of advertising is so strong and loud and intense. We’re amped up all the time... It helps you give art a chance to communicate.”

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Boyle Heights activists want all art galleries to GTFO of their neighborhood

2016-07-15T17:57:00-04:00

"We’re not against art or culture," [says Boyle Heights activist Maga Miranda.] "...But the art galleries are part of a broader effort by planners and politicians and developers who want to artwash gentrification." "We’re saying that they need to make a bigger effort to amplify the voices of the people that are gonna be most affected by this, and that doesn’t happen to be artists in this situation. It happens to be people who can’t afford to live here anymore."

Amid widespread gentrification in LA, activists in Boyle Heights have been scrutinizing the art galleries that set up shop there in recent years — including significant spaces like Self Help Graphics, which helped put the Eastside neighborhood on the cultural map. While activists want to prevent developers from taking control and “artwashing gentrification”, some gallery owners have expressed mixed reactions. The debate gets even more convoluted considering that some activists are also working artists.

New Kulapat Yantrasast-designed Gagosian Gallery to open in San Francisco

2016-03-11T20:56:00-05:00

Larry Gagosian’s new 4500 square foot space, designed by Kulapat Yantrasast, is set to open up on May 18, 2016, on 657 Howard Street, right across the street from SFMoMA. The inaugural exhibition there will focus on the relationships between modern and contemporary sculpture and drawing, featuring work from Picasso and Joe Bradley, among others.

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SANAA chosen to design NSW Art Gallery expansion

2015-05-27T14:04:00-04:00

Pritzker Prize laureates Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA were revealed today as the winners of an international competition to design the AUD$450 million expansion of the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Australia. As part of the Sydney Modern Project, the expansion will upgrade the existing building into a global cultural landmark that connects the Gallery, the Royal Botanic Gardens and the Domain, the city, and Sydney Harbor.

SANAA scored the commission out of 12 notable shortlisters like Kengo Kuma, David Chipperfield, Herzog & de Meuron, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien Architects, and Renzo Piano Building Workshop, to name a few.

SANAA incorporated the gallery site's surrounding topography and climate in their design, which features cascading platforms of sandstone and glass. The expansion will double the size of the 23,000 sq.m. gallery and will include new educational facilities, spaces for live performances and films, open exhibition spaces, and reintroduce natural day...

Contemporary Art in an 8th-Century Roman Church

2015-03-20T15:39:00-04:00

Next month, New York-based gallerist Gavin Brown will open a Rome gallery in an unexpected location: an 8th-century church named Sant’Andrea de Scaphis at Via dei Vascellari 69 in the Trastevere neighborhood... “It’s not that I was looking to open a place in Europe. I was looking to open this place in this building,” [said Brown] “I think a lot of people who run the kind of business I run have this real-estate problem...If you see empty buildings, you imagine what could be done there.”