ISSUE 83/FACADE/JUNE 30, 2010

UNDER THE BIG TOP

THE NEW OFFSHOOT OF THE CENTRE POMPIDOU IN METZ DRAWS VISITORS UNDER ITS ROOF FOR CULTURE AND COMMUNITY
IMAGES: JAMES EWING, WORDS: CLARA YOUNG

Like the Guggenheim, the Tate and the Louvre, Paris's Centre Georges Pompidou has gone into the franchising business and spun off its first satellite museum. Opened to the public last May in the northeastern French city of Metz, the Centre Pompidou-Metz was designed by the Japanese/ French duo of Shigeru Ban and Jean de Gastines. Ban and Gastines not only beat out Herzog & de Meuron and NOX Architects to win the competition, they delivered the museum on budget (10 million euros) and in record time-just three years after construction began.   MORE >>

ISSUE 82/FACADE/MAY 6, 2010

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE

PAINTING ARCHITECTURE WITH LIGHT, AN ARTIST PROGRAMS THE NEXT WAVE OF ABSTRACT ART
WORDS: TIM MCKEOUGH, IMAGES: JAMES EWING

With the opening of the Tampa Museum of Art, Floridians gain not just a new cultural center, but also an ethereal digital sunset courtesy of New York artist Leo Villareal. With a series of multicolored LED fixtures tucked between two layers of perforated aluminum panels in the museum’s facade, Villareal's installation, named "Sky (Tampa)," transforms the building at night into a 300-foot-long, 45-foot-high ribbon of pulsating, colored light.   MORE >>

BY POPULAR DEMAND

UNAFRAID OF FAMILIAR IMAGERY OR STRONG MESSAGES, HWKN MAKES PROVOCATIVE ARCHITECTURE FOR THE MASSES

The day before his inauguration, Barack Obama made an appearance at the Washington, DC, homeless-youth center Sasha Bruce House, pulling down a stubborn curtain and rolling cerulean paint on the walls according to a redesign by New York-based architecture firm HWKN. And while studio namesakes Matthias Hollwich (the HW) and Marc Kushner (KN) admit their $1,500 scheme merely created cleaner and more private spaces, the outpouring of responses to the project pegged it as revolutionary. Scores of TV viewers contacted their SoHo office to learn how they, too, could construct a more socially responsible reality.   MORE >>

ISSUE 81/FACADE/FEBRUARY 22, 2010

LIGHTING THE WAY

IN LINE WITH ITS MISSION AS A CULTURAL CATALYST FOR ITALIAN CULTURE, HADID’S LATEST OEUVRE IN ROME MARKS A TURNING POINT IN MUSEUM DESIGN
WORDS: EVA HAGBERG, IMAGES: ROLAND HALBE

When Zaha Hadid won the commission to design a new art museum in Rome's Flaminio neighborhood, Gehry's Guggenheim in Bilbao was two years old, Zaha's office was twenty-strong and the world was heading into a boom period. Ten years later, the 312,000-square-foot MAXXI (National Museum of the 21st Century Arts) seems at first glance like just another starchitect project. Instead, the MAXXI, developed and run by Italy's Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities as a way of bringing the nation fully into the current century, is a leap forward in museum architecture as remarkable as Gehry's Guggenheim.   MORE >>

ISSUE 79/FACADE/DECEMBER 22, 2009

GAGE/CLEMENCEAU

SINEOUS STRUCTURES, OVERSIZED VALENTINES AND MIND-BENDING GEOMETRIES RESULT FROM THIS TEAM'S NEED FOR BEAUTY AND EMOTION
IMAGES: WALLING & MCGARITY, WORDS: DAVID SOKOL

Romanesque. Georgian Revival. Collegiate Gothic. Mention any style that swept across America’s built landscape in the last 200 years, and you will probably elicit emotional responses. But the glass boxes that have come to define modern architecture? Not so much. "Over the past century, architecture has become exceedingly intellectualized, sometimes eclipsing emotion and a range of aesthetic sensations," says Mark Foster Gage. "Our work is trying to reinvigorate the way architecture resonates with people."   MORE >>

PAGE 1 / 2 / NEXT