MAMBA Renovation / MSGSSS
The project aims to refurbish the Museum of Modern Art in the city of Buenos Aires, unifying two existing buildings, with the aim of improving the experience of visitors and increase the space for the exhibition of works.
Museum
Spiritan Museum of African Arts / NeM / Niney et Marca architectes
Spiritanian collections are an exceptional testimony to the life, traditions, art and beliefs of the people of Central Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The works collected over time by the Spiritans are from Gabon, Congo Brazzaville and Congo Kinshasa, and are very varied. They concern both everyday life and the Sacred, with many masks and sculptures. Among them, major works from the history of African art. Most of these objects, miraculously preserved, had hitherto remained totally unknown both to the general public and to specialists.
Treasure House of Shanghai Himalaya Art Museum / Shan Xiang Architectural
The Treasure House is located in the Art Gallery of the Himalaya Center in Pudong, Shanghai. The building was designed by the famous Japanese architect Arata Isozaki and is a famous building in China.
China Museum Of Design Bauhaus Collection / Álvaro Siza + Carlos Castanheira
The Chinese Academy of Art (CAA) in Hangzhou has two campuses. One is in the city center, near West Lake, and a new larger campus is in the outskirts. The presence of the architect Wang Shu is ubiquitous on the new campus: most of its buildings were designed by him. When we started on this work, he had not yet received the 2012 Pritzker Prize. The help that we received from both of him and his architect wife Lu Wenyu during the early stages of our work – and even today -, were and continue to be fundamental.
Royal Alberta Museum / DIALOG
After outgrowing their original home in west-central Edmonton, Alberta’s provincial museum for both human and natural history embarked on a seven-year journey of re-discovery in the heart of downtown Edmonton’s Arts District. The new Royal Alberta Museum is intentionally designed to be anchored to this site—the design simply wouldn’t work anywhere else. Historically, it lies at the intersection of Canada’s two survey traditions, directly along the historic Canadian Northern Railway Line.
AD Classics: São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) / Lina Bo Bardi
This article was originally published on August 14, 2014. To read the stories behind other celebrated architecture projects, visit our AD Classics section.
When Lina Bo Bardi received the commission to build a new museum of art on São Paulo’s Terraço do Trianon, she was given the job under one condition: under no circumstances could the building block the site’s panoramic vistas of the lower-lying parts of the city. This rule, instituted by the local legislature, sought to protect what had become an important urban gathering space along Avenida Paulista, the city’s main financial and cultural artery. Undeterred, Bo Bardi came up with a solution that was simple and powerful. She designed a building with a massive split through its midsection, burying half of it below the terrace and lifting the other half into the sky. As a result, the plaza remained open and unobstructed, and in 1968, the iconic São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) was born.
Houston Museum of Fine Arts / Lake|Flato Architects
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, has finished the second phase in its multi-year campus- redevelopment plan with the completion of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation Center for Conservation. The 39,000-square- foot, state-of-the-art facility by Lake|Flato Architects brings the Museum’s distinguished conservation teams together on the main campus for the first time, in one of the largest, continuous spaces for the conservation of any public museum. In a related announcement, the MFAH has received $750,000 in renewed art-conservation funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Houston Museum of Fine Arts / Lake|Flato Architects
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, has finished the second phase in its multi-year campus- redevelopment plan with the completion of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation Center for Conservation. The 39,000-square- foot, state-of-the-art facility by Lake|Flato Architects brings the Museum’s distinguished conservation teams together on the main campus for the first time, in one of the largest, continuous spaces for the conservation of any public museum. In a related announcement, the MFAH has received $750,000 in renewed art-conservation funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science / Grimshaw Architects
The exciting 250,000 square foot Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science (Frost Science) in Miami, FL brings together an aquarium, planetarium and science museum onto one campus in downtown Miami’s Museum Park. Taking advantage of the city’s plentiful sunshine, ocean breezes from nearby Biscayne Bay and views to a growing downtown skyline, the inventive architecture of the museum furthers Miami-Dade County’s cultural offerings in a sophisticated, contemporary building.
MO Museum of Modern Art / Studio Libeskind
Designed by Studio Libeskind in collaboration with Do architects (Vilnius) and Baltic Engineers (Vilnius), the MO Modern Art Museum opened to the public on October 18 with a four-day celebration including a public talk by Daniel Libeskind in the Museum’s auditorium and the inaugural exhibition, All Art Is About Us.