Munich Museum Review

Here’s a nice review of Sauerbrach-Hutton’s new Brandhorst Museum of modern art in Munich. The review addresses important issues we’ll deal with next semester such as the role of color, the relation to the urban context, the difference between inside and outside in a museum… The reviewer Jonathan Glancey (always quite good) writes: “While the architecture is clearly an advertisement for what goes on inside its enticing walls… for all this polychromatic playfulness… it manages to be both flamboyant and modest…a jewel of a building, one that will greatly bolster Munich’s growing cultural significance…” See also the Brandhorst Museum website for more pics and architectural ideas, fabrication of the color facade, ideas on ecology, etc.

What architecture critics or regular “reviews” of architecture do you follow? Can you write a “review” of a new building near you, or an important building that you visit this summer? What ideas are represented? What is well done? What was the “intent” of the architect? How does the user react? What is the building’s relationship to its context (urban, historical, ideological, type, etc.)? How does the building “advance an agenda”? What agenda do you set within your review?

Evaluating Architecture: Objective or Subjective

Roger Lewis in the Washington Post asks: “how can one reliably evaluate architecture to distinguish between excellent design and mediocre or poor design?”

Lewis laments that American officialdom tends to avoid this question.  “Consequently, design standards and evaluation criteria focus on building characteristics that can be assessed objectively: functional performance, structural stability and durability, public health and safety, energy conservation, environmental impact and financial feasibility. Zoning and building codes do not address architectural style, contextual fit, visual composition or aesthetic creativity. Laws and policies do not talk about building scale, shape and proportion, symmetry and asymmetry, texture and color, or details and ornamentation.  Yet these fundamentally determine the aesthetic quality of architecture, whether a house or a museum.”

“Not surprisingly, lack of public discourse about design quality has produced urban and suburban environments full of unattractive, unlovable architecture.  Our utilitarian culture has enabled government and the private sector to develop millions of utilitarian structures — houses, apartments, offices, shopping centers, schools, warehouses, hotels — that are architecturally banal and sometimes downright ugly.”

“[Good] design requires judgment calls that reflect personal tastes and shifting preferences. Indeed, a frequently heard maxim sums it up: ‘Put three architects in a room, and you’ll get five opinions’.”  That’s not a bad thing, I say.

Architecture without Limits: Guggenheim Turns 50

Another post on the theme of museums, with modern additions:

F.L. Wright’s Guggenheim museum in New York turns 50 this summer.  It was a controversial design from the moment it was first conceived, and has been critiqued, celebrated, and emulated ever since, one of the icons of 20th-century architecture and museum design.   It has been impeccably restored over the last few years, and an exhibit opens this weekend chronicling Wright’s career.   See the Ouroussoff review “Architecture without Limits” in the NY Times.  A fun feature is also the interactive panoramic image of the inside of the Guggenheim’s rotunda (Flash), which can get you dizzy.  Wright’s career is a great example of someone who used architecture to do “research” on many different ideas in a very iterative process: each project pushing a bit further than the previous on similar themes.

A noteworthy part of the exhibit are the new architectural models that were created by Situ Studio.  The model of the Jacobs House, near Madison, WI, among the first “Usonian” houses by Wright, is an amazing “exploded model” of the various “systems” of the house: structural, enclosure, heating, materials, etc.  It’s a wonderful analysis of Wright’s fascination with, and penchant for innovation with regard to technical ideas that create new spatial paradigms.

New James Turrell Museum

The Wall Street Journal reports on a new museum dedicated to the work of  “light and earth” artist James Turrell, in a remote part of Argentina.  A Swiss collector has been buying and commissioning Turrell’s work since the 60s.  Turrell’s work is a kind of research, a kind of discovery through making, with a steady theme of exploration with constraints.

Piano’s New Chicago Art institute Addition

Renzo Piano’s much anticipated addition to the Chicago’s Art Institute open’s this weekend. Reviews are mostly good.  See the review by the New York Times’ architecture critic Nicholas Ourousoff.   You will be designing a museum addition this fall in 2nd year studio, and you will be going to Chicago next spring, so start looking out for both subjects in your wanderings this summer.