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Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent introduction to contemporary museum architecture
Like other volumes in Taschen's "Architecture Now!" series, this book features brief but excellent case studies. A well-written introduction by Philip Jodidio covers the development of museum architecture since the mid 20th century, putting star museum architects into their historical and cultural context. The meat of the book is comprised of the case studies of over 50 museums around the world, including a few unbuilt designs. Each project is prefaced by a one-page description of the architect or architectural firm with a brief biography and list of important works. One to three double-page spreads are dedicated to each museum, with a description the design requirements and inspiration, interior and exterior photographs, plans, elevations, and occasionally sketches.

Each museum is accompanied by no more than a few paragraphs of text, so this is not a resource for in-depth studies of individual museums, the design process, architectural decision-making, or the construction process. However, it provides an excellent overview of contemporary museum architecture around the world, allowing readers to spot themes and connections as well as how different museums can be. Highly recommended as a source of inspiration during the initial planning stages of a design project, and as a source of broad information about the current state of museum architecture. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Start your own museum - just try it...
Scarce and intriguing book for architects and art lovers alike, with abundant photos and blueprints. The text is in both English and German!Bright red covers, coated paper. 203 pp. Highly recommended. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

Ravishing pictures
The Cloisters is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and it's a precious jewel among our museums. At the end of the Victorian era and the beginning of the 20th century interest in the art and architecture of the Middle Ages peaked. Because so many wealthy people collected examples and donated them to the Cloisters, it became one of the finest examples of high quality art and architectural fragments from the Middle Ages.

If you can't visit New York anytime soon, this book captures the museum in all its quirky detail, from the churches and apses to the sculpture and stained glass. Color pictures lavishly display the glories of the Cloisters. Small, architectural fragments decorate the building.There are doorway surrounds, altars, sarcophagus, capitals festooned with saints, apostles, and strange beasts.

One striking piece--and it is only about 8 inches tall--is plate 46--which shows an ivory sculpture of the Madonna, and she is smiling down at the infant Christ. It's personal and tender in a way not usual for the time.

Everyday objects are also on display, including a set of 52 playing cards which appears, from the picture, to be in perfect condition.

An aquamanile in the form of a lion--plate 73--shows the pomp and pride of the renaissance that is to come.

a stunning work
What a beautiful book! This text "breaks apart" the structure of the Cloisters (itself assembled in a bit of a hodgepodge), taking individual elements and structures and examining them.

As an example of how accurate the descriptions are and how vividly it describes things: a few months after first looking at the book, I read a mystery in which there was a chase scene and a shootout (!) at the Cloisters. Because I had read this book, I was able to follow the *entire* scene and picture each major landmark mentioned. I hadn't been to the Cloisters in 10 years, but the book brought it all back that well!

The book is full of full-color photography, with descriptive text.However, this is more than a coffee table book; it deserves to be studied, not just propped up for looks. If you do get it, read it and do it justice! ... Read more

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Since the early 1990s, the American artist Frank Stella (b. 1936) has designed various architectural structures, including a band shell, pavilions, and museums. This book demonstrates how Stella’s formal concerns have evolved from paintings to wall reliefs to freestanding sculptures that extend into architecture. Included are illustrations of the 25 works in the accompanying exhibition that range from small models to a portion of a building at full scale. Photographs of  works by architects who have influenced Stella are also featured.

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The first in a series of three titles that will showcase selected works from The Museum of Modern Art's superlative holdings in the fields of architecture and design, this handsome volume features a wide range of drawings by great architects of the modern age, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, as well as contemporary practitioners Rem Koolhaas, Frank O. Gehry, and Zaha Hadid. Their drawings and watercolors combine exacting detail with astonishing beauty. The full-page illustrations, expertly reproduced in color or black-and-white according to the original drawing, reveal not only the range of aesthetic viewpoints but also the development of architecture over the last century. ... Read more

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Exploring the intersections of art, architecture, and design, at both renowned institutions and cutting-edge contemporary collections.

Museum interior spaces must be as carefully designed as their façades—if not more so—to meet the needs of both the art on display and the viewers. The design and construction of art museums in America thus is a complex process, and one rarely undertaken lightly. The architect must design a building that effectively supports the art exhibited. The museumgoers’ interaction with the art must be enhanced by the architecture, while amenities such as restaurants, cafes, gift shops, and accessible and convenient restrooms ensure their comfort. Finally, the storage of works of art not on display must be accounted for in the building design.

American Art Museum Architecture: Documents and Design explores all aspects of, and approaches to, museum architecture—the aesthetic, the practical, the innovative, and the functional. Architectural historian Eric M. Wolf delves into the archives of some of the country’s premier institutions not only to explore the design decisions made at their founding, but also to understand how those institutions have continued to evolve along with their collections, up to the present day.Wolf examines the gradual development of six major museums: the Frick Collection, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the Menil Collection in Houston, the Georgia O’Keefe Museum in Santa Fe, and the Art Institute of Chicago. He explains how each museum was originally conceived, how the architecture reflected or modified that original conception, and how the buildings have been reconsidered or revised in later years, as the nature of art, art display, and museum-going has evolved. Extensive archival plans, documents, and photographs enhance the narrative.

American Art Museum Architecture also considers the unique architectural challenges often posed by contemporary art. Conceptual art, video installations, and large-scale pieces are increasingly found in permanent collections, at small galleries and encyclopedic institutions alike. Museums built decades ago may have to renovate in order to accommodate such pieces, while newer museums devoted to contemporary work must tackle new architectural challenges when considering how best to house this work. Encompassing both grand nineteenth-century institutions and avant-garde contemporary art collections, American Art Museum Architecture is a timely and fascinating exploration of the ever-changing relationship between architecture and art.

Customer Reviews (1)

Six major museums are followed in a survey showing how each was originally conceived, then evolved
Arts libraries will also welcome Eric M. Wolf's AMERICAN ART MUSEUM ARCHITECTURE: DOCUMENTS AND DESIGN, a fine account telling of museum interior spaces and displays. All aspects of museum architecture, from innovations to functions, pack a survey by an architectural historian who examines some of the nation's leading institutions and their display options and design. Six major museums are followed in a survey showing how each was originally conceived, then evolved.
... Read more

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Museums are architectural trend-setters. Culture sponsoring and their increasing role as tourist attractions are guarantees for an ongoing boom in museum construction. A tradition and typology developed over the centuries, the planning and practical experience gained in recent decades and cutting-edge technology all contribute to the practice of modern day museum building. History and form, site development, floor plan, air-conditioning and climate technology are just some examples of the subjects treated systematically and contextually in the first section of this design manual. Some 70 international museum case-studies by renowned architects such as Tadao Ando, Stephen Holl, Renzo Piano and Herzog & de Meuron exemplify solutions and emphasize specific museum design issues such as spatial organisation and lighting. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

good and not expensive book
good and not expensive book, a must have for every architect who planning a museum.
lots of examples with different types of museum buildings. could be even better if it
has more details about the different sections of a museum building, such as upload/download areas,
storage rooms, administration and ecc. ... Read more

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Since the opening in 1997 of the Guggenheim Bilbao, designed by Frank Gehry, museum architecture has enjoyed worldwide attention on an unprecedented scale. That single watershed project demonstrated to municipalities that architecture has the power to transform the image of an entire city, thus making the turn of the twenty-first century the unofficial age of the museum building.
New Museums examines the boom in high-design museum projects in detail, beginning with the Guggenheim Bilbao’s groundbreaking role in the development of contemporary museum architecture. It continues with a beautifully illustrated tour of 30 examples of the most innovative and exciting museum architecture around the world, including Tadao Ando’s Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth, Zaha Hadid’s Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Renzo Piano’s Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, and many others. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

31 museums in only good photos
31 museums in this small size survey at only 6.5 x 8.25 inches (16.5 x 21 cm) are depicted only by photos, but good ones.Following the introductory part on 12 pages, each of 31 buildings is headed by a description filling up a title page with text followed by 5 pages with only photos. This is an album-like book without any technical edge. It is similar to the book "New Museums" (ISBN: 0714844985), but only a half of its size and... splendor. Like all from the Universe Architecture series, it is compact and well published.
CONTENTS:
6 Introduction
18Contemporary Art Museum; St. Louis, Missouri; Allied Works Architecture
24Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts; St. Louis, Missouri; Tadao Ando
30Kiasma, Museum of Contemporary Art; Helsinki, Finland; Steven Holl Architects
36Contemporary Arts Center (CAC); Cincinnati, Ohio; Zaha Hadid
42Jewish Museum; Berlin, Germany; Daniel Libeskind
48American Folk Art Museum; New York, New York; Tod Williams Billie Tsien and Associates
54Museum of Modern Art, Queens; Long Island City, Queens, New York; Michael Maltzan and Cooper, Robertson & Partners
60Museum of Modern Art; New York, New York; Yoshio Taniguchi
66Kunsthaus Graz; Graz, Austria; Spacelab Cook-Fournier
72Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Foundation; Vienna, Austria; Ortner and Ortner
78Kunsthaus Bregenz; Bregenz, Austria; Peter Zumthor
84Tate Modern; London, England; Herzog & de Meuron
90Dia:Beacon; Beacon, New York; Robert lrwin and OpenOffice Art + Architecture Collaborative
960-Museum; Iida, Nagano, Japan; SANAA
102 Kalkriese Archaeological Museum Park; Kalkriese, Germany; Gigon & Guyer
108 Paper Art Museum; Shizuoka, Japan; Shigeru Ban
114 Art Pavilion "De Verbeelding"; Zeewolde, Netherlands; René van Zuuk Architects
120 Makino Museum of Plants and People; Shikoku Island, Japan; Hiroshi Naito
126 Echigo-Matsunoyama Museum of Natural Science; Matsunoyama, Japan; Takaharu + Yui Tezuka Architects
132 De Young Museum; San Francisco, California; Herzog & de Meuron
136 Vulcania: Parc Europeen du Volcanisme; Saint-Ours les Roches, Auvergne, France; Hans Hollein
142 Mesquite Heritage Museum and Art Center; Mesquite, Nevada; AssemblageSTUDlO
148 Luyeyuan Sculpture Museum; Sichuan Province, China; Jiakun Liu
154 Stone Museum; Nasu, Japan; Kengo Kuma & Associates
160 asher Sculpture Center; Dallas, Texas; Renzo Piano Building Workshop
166 Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; Fort Worth, Texas; Tadao Ando
174 Nevada Museum of Art; Reno, Nevada; William Bruder
180 Bellevue Arts Museum; Bellevue, Washington; Steven Holl Architects
186 Moderna Museet; Stockholm, Sweden; Rafael Moneo
192 Museu Serralves; Oporto, Portugal; Alvaro Siza
200 Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College; Saratoga Springs, New York; Antoine Predock
206 Notes
207 Photography Credits
208 Resources ... Read more

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Scarcely any other contemporary building has been the focus of so much attention and heated discussion as the Jewish Museum in Berlin. This guide to the museum's architecture sheds light on its symbolism as well as on the philosophy behind it. The historic and social significance of this museum extends far beyond the bounds of the city. Its already famous zigzag structure challenges the very way we regard architecture. German, Japanese, French and Italian versions available. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Interesting and Informative
I just got this book from Amazon.com and I'm already enjoying it. It discusses very well many details on the Jewish Museum Berlin by Daniel Libeskind. Great photos and floor plans are provided as great visual aids.You can really gain an appreciation for this unique building by gettingthis book. ... Read more

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The New Acropolis Museum in Athens is a boldly designed landmark of contemporary architecture, that boasts brilliant natural light, glass floors that afford views onto the archaeological excavation sites below and a top level that is rotated several degrees in relation to the building's lower floors in order to orient the famous ancient Parthenon Frieze, displayed on the top story, in exactly the same direction that it was in ancient times. Opened to the public in 2009, this museum is the work of Bernard Tschumi, who won a design competition in 2001 with an entry that outlined, the architect said, a "simple and precise museum with the mathematical and conceptual clarity of ancient Greece." Located in Athens' historic area of Makryianni, the museum stands less than 1,000 feet southeast of the Parthenon, at the entrance of a network of pedestrian walkways that provide access to the Acropolis. Professor Dimitrios Pandermalis, President of the Organization for the Construction of the New Acropolis Museum, has hailed the design for its "simple, clear, and beautiful solution that is in accord with the beauty and classical simplicity of the Museum's unique exhibits"; Pandermalis contributes the preface to this volume, one in Poligrafa's new series of monographs on new museum architecture. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The New Acropolis Museum
Very nice publication and with a lot of pictures and exhibits that you are not able to see in Athens when you visit the Acropolis.
I like the book very much. ... Read more

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In this updated edition of the seminal Towards a New Museum, Victoria Newhouse explores the revolution in museum culture that has influenced the architecture of these institutions. She pinpoints the increasing control of artists over the presentation of their work in museum settings and demonstrates how the public interest in art has encouraged satellite museums, small, private museums, and a more overt relationship with the site, even in the most puritanical white cube galleries. Possibly the most dramatic change of all is the predominance and proliferation of the "museum as entertainment."

Among the institutions presented in detail are the Museum of Modern Art in New York (Taniguchi and Associates); the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas (Renzo Piano Building Workshop); the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati (Office of Zaha Hadid); the de Young Museum in San Francisco (Herzog & de Meuron); and a series of museums in Japan, including the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa by Sejima + Nishizawa/SANAA.Amazon.com Review
Should art museums be designed to surprise and delight or toinstruct and uplift? Should the museum building be a temple of art oran entertainment complex? Architectural historian Victoria Newhouseconsiders these and other questions about museums in her bookTowards a New Museum. Newhouse examines dozens of art museumsbuilt during the 1980s and 1990s and describes how the buildings fitinto the history of ideas about the proper function of museums. Somemuseums are like cabinets of curiosities, a hodgepodge of items thecollector assembles to delight viewers. Other designers of museumsstrive to provide a neutral environment that does not distract viewersfrom the art. However, some architects believe that hanging paintingson white walls in galleries separates the art from itscontext. Architects and artists have grappled with these ideas andcreated some stunning and outlandish museums in recent years. Newhousedescribes the sinuous, titanium-coated new Guggenheim Museum inBilbao, Spain, and the fractured forms of the Fredrick R. Weisman ArtMuseum in Minneapolis. She writes about the artist Donald Judd, whobought most of Marfa, Texas, and made it a museum. These are bold andsometimes beautiful museums. Newhouse wisely includes plenty of goodpictures and diagrams of each building.

In different segments of the book, Newhouse discusses: privatemuseums, museums that function as temples of art, museums devoted toone artist, and museums designed by artists. She also devotes achapter to the unfortunate impact of museum politics on design. Thischapter, "Wings That Don't Fly," illustrates some of themore vivid design disasters in recent history, including the"toilet tank" addition to the Guggenheim in New York. Arthistorians, architects, and people who are connected to museums willfind this book an instructive, thoughtful overview of what's going onwith museums today. --Jill Marquis ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

interesting case studies in museum architecture
Textbook was larger that I thought it would be, but the seller shipped in a timely manner. Great book full of case studies of museum architecture from around the world. I used it all semester in a museum studies architecture class and really enjoyed the examples provided. Can be a light read, or can go into more depth for those seriously interested.

disappointing
This book is ok if you want a coffee-table type, once-over- lightly look at some new museums.If you want the kind of serious consideration or analysis that seems promised by the contents/chapter titles, look elsewhere.A waste of $ for my purposes.

An articulate overview of recent museum design
Victoria Newhouse's book on recent museum design is fascinating--I have been to many of the projects she includes (there are lots and lots of them), and her descriptions and analyses of them never fail to strike me as remarkably insightful. I don't always agree with her comments or her selection of projects (Frank Stella should stick to painting), but as a whole the book is both a wide-ranging compendium of current designs for the visual arts, and an informed treatise with a strong point of view. Far from being an advocate of universal space, Newhouse keeps returning to her central theme: how well does a particular design serve its particular contents? In answering that question, she displays an unusual comprehension of sophisticated issues in both the architectural and artistic arenas. Newhouse has visited much and looked hard; she has also apparently done a lot of research, talked to many of the clients, architects, and curators, and gives one not only the obvious facts but often the inside story. Then she calls it as she sees it, cogently summarizing the strengths and weaknesses of each project's suitability as a container for art. This is required reading for anyone seriously interested in or involved with problems of museum and gallery design. ... Read more

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A fascinating architectural study in museum design and urban planning.

Designed by the internationally renowned Swiss firm of Herzog & de Meuron, winners of the 2001 Pritzker Prize, the new de Young Museum in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park is a stunning architectural tour de force. This book documents the complex five-year process that resulted in an outstanding contribution to contemporary museum architecture.

Founded by San Francisco Chronicle publisher Michael de Young, the museum originated in the Midwinter International Exposition of 1894 and grew to become the city's largest art museum. Its superb permanent collection includes the arts of Africa, Oceania, and traditional cultures of the Americas; American painting and sculpture from the colonial period to the present; and both Western and non-Western textiles.

After the de Young was damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the museum's fate—and the decision to replace the old building with a new museum on the same site—became the focus of intense public debate. How Herzog & de Meuron, in cooperation with the San Francisco firm of Fong & Chan Architects and Oakland-based landscape designer Walter Hood, responded to the challenge of creating a building in harmony with its park setting is an important theme of the story.

Lavishly illustrated with color photographs as well as plans, drawings, and models, the book traces the architects' creative process in striking detail. The new de Young is significant as Herzog & de Meuron's first major building in North America and as the first museum the architects have designed from the ground up. Reflecting its surroundings, the building is clad entirely in a skin of dimpled and perforated, naturally oxidized copper panels, whose abstract pattern was distilled from manipulated photographs of the park's tree canopy. With its elegant, twisting tower rising above the tree line, providing visitors with dramatic views, the de Young is a superlative work of architecture and a handsome tribute to the city of San Francisco. 250 illustrations, 200 in color. ... Read more

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Since antiquity, the achievements of the Greeks in art and architecture have elicited great admiration.From the Parthenon and the other temples on the Acropolis of Athens to the fabled palace of King Minos at Knossos on Crete to the walled city of Mycenae-home of the Trojan leader Agamemnon-Greek art and architecture continue to this day to fascinate visitors to Greece and influence Western aesthetics. This informative handbook traces Greek art and architecture from the third millennium to the first century B.C. Belozerskaya and Lapatin relate the rich development of styles, techniques, and motifs to the history of this period. The culmination of these developments in architecture, sculpture, and vase painting in the fifth century B.C. is illustrated in such masterpieces as the temples at Paestum in Italy, the sculptures of the Parthenon, the bronze charioteer from Delphi, and works of the Attic black- and red-figure vase painters. Also included in the book is a discussion of the spread of Greek culture to southern Italy and Sicily and the influence of Greek artistic traditions on Roman art. With more than three hundred illustrations, this book will serve as an attractive guide for students, travelers, and all those interested in ancient Greek civilization. ... Read more

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Early in their careers, J0rgen Bo and Vilhelm Wohlert took on the expansion of a villa on the coast outside Copenhagen, the Louisiana Museum, which wanted more space for Modern art. The first stage was completed in 1958 and the last in 1991. The additions that continued in between, which are everywhere acknowledged as masterful, model both the growth of a remarkable institution and shifting attitudes about the display of art. ... Read more

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The architecture of British natural history museums reveals the complex definitions of nature in the 19th century. "Nature's Museums" allows the buildings themselves to act as a guide to the Victorians' understanding of the natural world.Amazon.com Review
Scientists in the medieval and early-modern eras faced manyobstacles to sharing their discoveries, among them the lack oforganized, comparative collections of specimens. Such assemblages werealmost exclusively in the hands of wealthy individuals, and scholarsof more modest means had to content themselves with "cabinets ofwonder," potpourris of natural curiosities whose message was often nomore profound than "behold, death is near."

One of the signal developments of the Victorian era, observes arthistorian Carla Yanni, was the building of great museums, accessibleto both scholars and the interested public, to house large collectionsof fossils, minerals, and other relics of the natural world. Some ofthese museums, such as London's Pantherion, offered astonishing andsometimes fictitious spectacles: in the Pantherion, for example,"stuffed animals were staged in frightening battles," while a greatartificial swamp filled with sculptures of dinosaurs ringed theSydenham Crystal Palace. Others, such as the incomparable NaturalHistory Museum of London, became clearinghouses for the exchange ofscientific ideas in the age of Darwin and Huxley. By the 1880s,science museums of all kinds had become popular destinations forfamily outings, and also the subject of considerable debate, with somescholars objecting to the supposed vulgarization of knowledge to whichspectacles inevitably led.

But, Yanni notes, in their many forms, these museums also became the"primary places of interaction between natural science and its diversepublics," allowing greater participation in learning and ultimatelyserving science well. Heavily illustrated with period engravings andarchitectural renderings, Yanni's book is a useful and entertainingcontribution to the history of science. --Gregory McNamee ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Old curiosity shops
As a rule, when considering whether to buy an academic monograph, I check the endnotes for the introduction for the name of Foucault. If it's there, I don't buy.

I neglected to do this with "Nature's Museums." Foucault is here, but, for a change, architectural historian Carla Yanni and most of the authorities she cites find his categories of space don't fit Victorian natural history museums.

The news is, however, not all good. Yanni is a confessed postmodernist and believer in its theories of science. Basically, that science doesn't exist. That it is "socially constructed" and "gains legitimacy from its local associations."

This is not so, but if it were so, then, if we follow Yanni's examination of the development of four major (and several minor) natural history museums in Great Britain, then she would have hard time explaining why we are not all creationists still. Because creationists, principally Richard Owen, dominated the money-raising, concepts, iconography, choice of exhibits and public face of the museums.

This contradiction is not apparent to Yanni because she misunderstands the outcome of the creationism/evolution contest. She downplays the triumph of Darwinism (which had swept all before it within three years or so, despite what Thomas Kuhn may say about paradigm shifts) and overstates the coexistence of religion and science in Victorian Britain.

True, many, perhaps most, practicing biologists remained Christians and perhaps not merely nominal ones. But Christianity had changed. Darwin forced it to abandon perfectionism and to give up the doctrine of the fixity of species. Paley, cited often here, would not have recognized scientists of the late 19th century as Christians.

Well, so much for the confusions that underlie the analysis. Is there anything interesting left? Not much.

Yanni makes much of a supposed split between artifice and nature, or "God-created" and "man -created," which, according to her, started the century mixed together in collections but ended it each with its own structures, to which architects -- the focus of her interest -- contributed an intellectual framework. This sounds plausible until you compare it with evidence.

Museums, of course, became specialized, but there was and is no particular animus against mixing. The Bishop Museum, contemporaneous with the British Museum (Natural History), which bills itself as the greatest museum in the Pacific, happily combines ethnological, artistic and natural collections. Many state museums, as for example in Virginia and Iowa, do, too. A good example is the Falls of the Ohio museum operated by the state of Indiana at Jeffersonville. And the ultimate refutation -- in origin Victorian, too -- would be what is probably the most popular natural history exhibit in North America (if not the whole world), which combines natural history, art, technology and social history -- the glass flowers at the Agassiz Museum at Harvard University.

There's not much left, even for people who seek out natural history museums and take an interest in their curatorial history. (Which people do. The Peabody, on the opposite side of the wall from the glass flowers, has preserved a whole floor unchanged from the 19th century in order to demonstrate how display practices have changed.)

Science advances on a broad front, and, unlike architecture, it cannot go back. If Huxley rather than Owen had dominated the design of the British museums, which are almost all still in use today, their 21st century uses would not be much different. It may be incongruous that secularized scientists (and tourists) enter the Oxford University Museum through a portal guarded by an angel, but no more so than to see modern-day Christians who no longer believe in, say, the virgin birth, worshipping in churches layered with statues of Mary.

The text of "Nature's Museums" is not long, as the book is copiously illustrated. The illustrations are, however, too small to reveal much. The book might be of some interest to anyone visiting the museums today: the Hunterian, the Edinburgh, the Oxford or the British are examined in detail, with others, like the Dublin, alluded to.

The Hunterian, by the way, also confutes Yanni's theory of museumology. According to her, the explicit science museums did not develop from the "cabinets of wonder" but were novel Victorian establishments, arising from heterogeneous and haphazard collections that were dumped on the universities or nation.

The Hunterian, however, was a thoughtfully amassed collection that included both curiosities and deliberate "preparations," and it was explicitly pedagogical. It also was Georgian, not Victorian.

Furthermore, Yanni is wrong to suggest that the practice of dumping curiosities on the nation was a 19th century innovation. It's true that middle class collectors of the Renaissance, like Worm, kept their collections in their houses (where else?) for themselves, but in classical times, wealthy collectors did what Victorian scientists and patrons did: They put their most spectacular items on display in public buildings. In their case, temples. See my review of Adrienne Mayor's "The First Fossil Hunters."
... Read more

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The lead article in the October 2004 issue of Architectural Record, devoted to contemporary museums, noted that "museums continue to proliferate across the international landscape, leading to the conclusion that, post-Bilbao, every municipality seems to want a smash." Certainly, following the opening of Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, museums gained a newfound cache among architects and clients. The mission and purpose of the museum is rapidly evolving: museums today are frequently more than repositories for historical art: they can be research centers, memorials, contemporary galleries, or site-specific artworks in themselves. New Museums documents the best of new museum design and features 27 projects in 13 countries in Europe, the United States, Israel, and Japan. The architects represented are among the most renowned practitioners in the world today; in addition to those mentioned above, they include van Berkel + Bos, Santiago Calatrava,Zaha Hadid,! Kengo Kuma, and Alvaro Siza, as well as lesser-known, talented designers such as Zvi Hecker in Israel and Diener & Diener in Switzerland.

An illustrated general introduction discusses well-known historical precedents as well as current themes relevant to museum design: the museum as a neutral container, its role in placing art in context, the museum as an addition to an existing building, and as a distinct work of art.

Each project is thoroughly documented with color photographs, plans, drawings, and a project description ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Album-like survey of 27 significant museums
This is a survey of 27 post-Guggenheim Bilbao museums on 325 illustrations, (275 color) of a high quality.The not very legible introduction is short.Each museum is described on one page, and presented in color on 6-12 illustrations without references.There is no analysis or architectural critique, but just an album-like review for those, who can analyze architecture themselves or enjoy its presentation without analysis.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction * Museum of Hiroshige Ando, Japan (Kengo Kuma) * Horiyuji Treasures Gallery, Tokyo (Yoshio Taniguchi) * Paper Art Museum, Japan (Shigeru Ban) * Het Valkhof Museum, The Netherlands (van Berkel + Bos) * Seralves Museum, Portugal (Alvaro Siza) * Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA (Zaha Hadid) * Liner Museum, Switzerland (Gigon/Guyer) * Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, Texas, USA (Tadao Ando) * Schaulager, Basel (Herzog + de Meuron) * Palmach Museum of History, Tel Aviv (Zvi Hecker) * Nizayama Forest Art Museum, Tokyo (Lapena & Torres) * O Museum, Japan (Kazuyo Sejima/SANAA * Altamira Museum, Spain (J.N. Baldeweg) * Museo de Bellas Artes, Spain (Mansilla + Tunon) * Vulcania Museum, France (Hans Hollein) * Great Court, British Museum, London (Foster + Partners) * Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, The Netherlands (Abel Cahen) * Centre PasquArt, Switzerland (Diener & Diener) * Museum of Modern Art, Vienna (Ortner & Ortner) *Milwaukee Art Museum addition, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA (Santiago Calatrava) * Kiasma Museum, Helsinki, Finland (Steven Holl) * Imperial War Museum North, Manchester, UK (Daniel Libeskind) * River and Rowing Museum, UK (David Chipperfield) * Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas, USA (Renzo Piano) * Jewish Museum, Berlin (Daniel Libeskind) * Kunsthaus, Graz, Austria (Peter Cook) * American Folk Art Museum, New York, USA (Williams + Tsien) * Endmatter ... Read more

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In 1982, more than four hundred years after she mysteriously sank off the English coastline, Henry VIII's great warship the Mary Rose was raised to the surface. The extraordinarily intact ship was towed to a dry dock in the beautiful and historic harbor at Portsmouth, where she lies today, an enduring symbol of Britain's seafaring past.

In January 1991, the internationally acclaimed architect Christopher Alexander was commissioned by the Mary Rose Trust to design a museum to house this national treasure. Grounded in his techniques and principles for a new way of building that have earned Alexander a worldwide following over the last two decades, this book explains Alexander's vision of a permanent home for the Mary Rose. Spanning from the first inception of its design to finished models and drawings, it includes detailed, step by step explanations of the way this vision could be realized in structure and construction. Emphasizing the unification of design and construction, with hands on construction management by the architect, it provides a model for the way a large and highly technical building can be designed with proper importance given to human comfort and human feeling, while using the most advanced and sophisticated technology.

Published here for the first time are the revolutionary construction management contracts for construction developed by Alexander and his associate Gary Black and their colleagues at the Center for Environmental Structure. Also of keen interest to professionals are the more than 100 drawings and photographs of the distinctive lattice arches that were firstintroduced by Alexander and Black in a smaller building in San Jose, California, and are a central part of Alexander's vision for the finished museum.

To the half a million visitors who flock to see the Mary Rose each year, she is an opportunity to touch the past. To Alexander, the great ship is a touchstone for the architecture of the future. His vision of a new age in which respect for nature and the integrity of the past go hand in hand with advances in technology will inspire architects, engineers, builders, museum professionals, and anyone who cares about the design and construction of the great public buildings of the next century.Richly illustrated, and offering a wealth of conceptual, technical, and practical information, this volume is a most remarkable reference and guide. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A superb rethink of the whole architectural process
The book tells the story of Alexander's et al design for the museum to house the Mary Rose, Henry VIII's ship raised from the sea. The design process was interesting and very consistent with previous works, and has not been executed yet.What was mind bending for me was the total rethink on money and construction budgeting.Like a Pattern Language the budget and the construction schedule become part of the Architect's services, not just something that has to be dealt with after everything has been drawn. Alexander proposed that his group would serve as the general contractor for the benefit of the project. The owner's payments would be slightly in advance of completed work, instead of crunching contractor's and subs time and money.The architects would have authority toreallocate time and money to make the building better, not the contractor's pockets fatter. All to make the building live! ... Read more