Narrative Space, a conference hosted by the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester in the UK, starts today, despite the volcanic ash cloud. It is an “international conference exploring the interpretive potential of museum architecture and design.” (Sounds great, sad I can’t go!)
Full program (big PDF) here.
A new lamp for the home (and public spaces, methinks) conjures up sunny days on demand: “Reveal is a new type of ambient interior lighting. This product creates the impression of sunlight streaming through a window and onto an interior wall. A light breeze appears to move through trees in the cast image. The first edition, limited at 1000, are available now.”
From the rather interesting Adam Frank Inc., via the SEGD blog.
Sometimes in the early stages of a design project, an unfortunate physical similarity goes unnoticed until someone coins an unforgettable phase that captures it. I’ve seen perfectly lovely design concepts rejected because of this peculiar phenomenon.
Fortunately in this case, the citizens of Metz, France, seem to like the fact that their new museum, the Pompidou-Metz by architect Shigeru Ban, looks to their mayor like a “smurf house” (one supposes he would have actually said it in French: “chez les Schtroumpfs”).
Via the New York Times.
The blinking, wiggling and beeping Kinetica Art Fair 2010. Video via ArtLyst, original tip from @artnetdotcom.
Just in: first look by architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne in the LA Times – with images and commentary – of Frank Gehry’s design for the Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, DC. First reaction: very un-Gehry, so to speak, which in this case is a good thing. (The space shown in the model above is immediately off the National Mall.) Via @culturemonster.
In the New York Times today, a review by resident architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff calls Jean Nouvel’s new design for the National Museum of Qatar his “most overtly poetic act of cultural synthesis yet.” From the early images, I’m inclined to agree. Several of us were raving about it today, wondering why no one had used a disc form this way before. A wonderful reminder that there are still good, simple design ideas out there waiting to be found.
PLOT Magazine continues to publish some of the best examples of new exhibition design and museum planning from Europe. In Vienna, the historical exhibit Battle for the City is filled with uncommon design ideas, from the nuanced to the wonderfully new (above, a surprisingly fresh treatment for exhibit walls). Unlike the printed magazine, PLOT’s web text is not in English, so here is a partial translation of the project description (any errors mine):
With Battle for the City, the Künstlerhaus in Vienna presents one of the greatest historical exhibitions in recent years. The show, designed by Viennese firm BWM Architekten und Partner, offers 2,000 square meters [21,500 square feet] of insights into the Vienna of the 1920s and 1930s: the tension between democracy and dictatorship, avant-garde and provincialism, departure and resignation.
A bumper crop: 57 new developments (1-13 March). (Previous list. All past lists.)
There were 32 new developments:
Thanks to a kind twinvitation* from Nancy Proctor, the Head of New Media at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, I have just done a review of the provocative new iPhone app “How It Is” from Tate Modern. The full review is available at the Museum Mobile Wiki site.
The app is a companion piece for Polish artist Miroslav Balka’s current installation of the same name, on view in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, and it is part of what I argue is a more or less continuous suite of experiences that includes the artwork itself, an “exploration” web site, and the app. So long as you follow the advice I stumbled on, and make sure to experience the app in a dark room with headphones on, you may agree with my conclusions: that this is a great, perhaps even revolutionary, new museum mobile project.
* An invitation made through Twitter?
Langley academy in the UK, designed by architects Foster & Partners, and based on New York City’s renowned Museum School, goes one better: it contains a museum, has museum objects in every classroom, and devotes two afternoons a week visiting museums. Parents, apparently, are thrilled, according to an article last month in The Guardian (UK):
It hardly needs saying, but Annie Renouf Donaldson, headteacher at the £23m Lord Foster-designed Langley academy in Berkshire, is anxious to say it anyway. “Our museum programme is not a bolt-on, it’s at the heart of what we do. Some school trips to museums are just a one-day treat, a nice outing at the end of the term. Our own museum, our work with real museum objects in our classes, our visits to museums, these are stitched into the fabric of what we do in every class, every day.”
Langley specialises in science, computing and sport, but is also the first in Britain to commit itself to museum learning across the entire curriculum, inspired by the New York City Museum School.
The students don’t just experience the work of curators, the students are the curators:
In the Langley museum a pupil-curated display holds the most prized possessions of their English teacher. Beside the photographs and a biographical note on the American guitar hero Les Paul, who died in August, there are two of the legendary Les Paul Gibson guitars, pride and joy of Shane Stritch, who has swooped straight to the top of the coolness league table. The academy is also awash with dinosaurs.
20 new developments:
The Guggenheim has put all 200 proposals online from the “Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum” project. (For this year’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of Wright’s building, “scores of artists and architects” were invited to propose their own ideas for the “catalytic” and famously photogenic central void. Above: Studio Arne Quinze.) Past post here.
The Art and Science of Renzo Piano from kontentreal on Vimeo: the interview is old(ish), but the sentiments are timeless. And the video is a great look behind the scenes and back in time to before the opening of the California Academy of Sciences.
See more (terrific!) videos from the e2 sustainable design series on PBS here. From an original tip from @midatlanticmuse.
I can’t seem find the original source, but a set of beautiful images of the exhibits at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany have just gone up on a number of different blogs.
And if that’s not enough, here are even more images of the exhibits. Mercedes Museum: architecture by UN Studio, exhibit design by HG Merz.
My Shelfari bookshelf: the latest on exhibit design, museum planning, and interactive space.
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