This year, to mark the 200th anniversary of the Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy, OMA has collaborated with the local architect Andrea Tabocchini for a reset of its historic Gallery of the Kings.
Partner David Gianotten and Project Architect Andreas Karavanas were responsible for leading the design, which remodeled the existing space to better display Egyptian statuary pieces as they were originally presented in the context of Karnak—an ancient temple complex that served as an architectural showcase to which Pharaohs added their various creations.
The emerging Tabocchini, who was recently named a 40under40 European Design award winner, says of the design: "From the outset, we all saw this project as an opportunity to redesign a unique exhibition space. Culture must honor the past while remaining alive, evolving, being relevant in the present and inspiring the future."
Visitors will first journey through a two-hall temple space whose newly uncovered 17th century architecture reveals vaults and high windows. The tour is bookended by Sphinx-flanking statues to goddess Sekhmet and effigies of the god Ptah and a statue of the god Amun, framed in between with reflective aluminum walls.
Work on the gallery precedes the culmination of a larger renovation effort next year. That includes a new covered courtyard space called the Piazza Egizia and a sequence of six interlocking "urban public rooms." The pre-renovation gallery was the product of a 2006 design from the scenographer Dante Ferretti.
OMA beat other entries from Kengo Kuma, Pininfarina, Carlo Ratti Associati, and Snøhetta to win the museum's international design competition in January of last year.
7 Comments
I don't care if people disagree but when I saw this museum here showcasing looted artifacts, I didn't care how or what architecture houses them anymore. It is like the thief's vitrined basement glorifying the heist.
I want to change my opinion about the global north but it is one thing after another. There are too many colonial skeletons in its closets.
I'm glad the Western World takes care to preserve its ancient cultural artifacts with such care and focus, here proved by OMA -- always better at small scale design than large. In other cultures, the impulse is usually to destroy and loot artifacts, including in successor regimes to Ancient Egypt that pillaged and sold off their own culture.
Ancient Egypt no longer exists, so its artifacts are the property of all of us in Western Civilization. As for other cultures and their artifacts, you don't get to do a do-over if you sell off artifacts to make a quick buck.
What?
I cant stop reading this dumb pile of shit.
"In other cultures, the impulse is usually to destroy and loot artifacts" - wrong, its mostly the Europeans that have done this and abetted crime and pillaging. Im sure your white savior complex comes in handy, Eamez.
It's always shocking to see how ignorant and uneducated this group is. Have you heard of the Cultural Revolution in China? The destruction of thousands of temples, churches, mosques and artworks? How about the Taliban's destruction of Buddhist monuments? Or ISIS doing the same?
Meanwhile Europe engaged in free trade and legal purchases of cultural artifacts that had little value to those that sold them. Now the communists in America are back at it, trying to loot and tear down culture and send it back to the old world meat grinder.
You have a nice soft and untrue version of most brutal colonialisms and slave trades... Dream on, as you try to change the discussion to include isolated cases. Many tried before you but somewhat it does not go any further. Go ahead and enjoy your increasingly less-populated "white savior" delusions while contemporary historians are writing otherwise.
Notice that I began talking about Western Civilization, of which Europe is a part but not the only part of. Meanwhile commenters keep stating their hatred of Europe and white people, while defending much more brutal regimes in Asia, Africa and elsewhere. The academic left in America is just a thinly veiled hate group against white people.
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