UMEÅ ART MUSEUM BY HENNING LARSEN ARCHITECTS

Umeå Art Museum is located at the 15,000 m2 new Arts Campus at Umeå University in northern Sweden. The new campus also comprises the Academy of Fine Arts, the Institute of Design and the School of Architecture.

The consolidation of artistic institutes and exhibition facilities is based on a close collaboration between various companies with a view to allow art, design and architecture to benefit from one another.

Umeå's position as a centre of art and education is strenghtened with a new silhouette by the Umeälven river. In its previous facilities, the museum has displayed international contemporary art and classic art-historical exhibitions side by side since 1981.

The new museum more than doubles the exhibition area and, with its protruding, visible location by the river, it will become a new landmark in the area.

The museum comprises three exhibition halls placed on top of each other. The large, square halls are free from load-bearing structures and are supported by four legs, with one leg placed on each side of the square rooms.

Around the exhibition halls, the legs create an outer, narrow gap towards the facades – a niche, which lets the cool sun and sky light pour into the space and merge with the warm artificial light.

In addition to the light effect, the niches allow for natural breaks from the artistic exploring, and the higher up you go, the more you are drawn towards the view of the river, city and landscape. 

The four legs not only support the building but also serve as wells for all vertical movement: elevators, stairs, pipes and ventilation ducts. The entrance and foyer span across the three lower levels and comprise a museum shop, a children’s workshop and an auditorium.

A partly triple-high room serves to connect the spaces. As the other buildings at the Arts Campus, the facade features vertical louvres in Siberian larch, which supports its verticality – only broken by the large windows and the glass floor in the middle.

Umeå Art Museum wishes to attract international artists. This imposes high requirements on museum safety and climate control. The museum connects to the local district heating system and features maintenance-free materials.

 

Location: Umeå, Sweden

Architect: Henning Larsen Architects

Project Team: White Arkitekter, Tyréns, WSP Group, TM-Konsult

Gross floor area: 3.500 m2

Year: 2009 - 2011

Client: Balticgruppen AB

MUSEUM MUMAC BY ARKISPAZIO

MuMAC, Museum of Coffee Machine, was designed by Paolo Balzanelli owner of Arkispazio and Valerio Cometti founder of Valerio Cometti+V12 Design in order to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Cimbali Group, the most important pofessional coffee machine manufacturer in the world, through its legendary brands LaCimbali and Faema.

MuMAC lies within the establishment of the Cimbali Group a few miles South of Milan. The core of the new architecture is a building previously used as a warehouse, within which are located both the exposition area and a versatile open space suitable for events and exhibitions to the culture of coffee. MuMAC narrates a story that spans across 100 years, recounting the history of this extraordinary objects within its 1,800 square meters.

Both facades of the museum have been rendered with a delicate nonetheless technological technique: “LaCimbali red” slats of a composite material create a sinuous embrace that has been inspired by the flow of the aroma lifting off a coffee cup and at night a carefully designed illumination creates a strikingly backlit grid of light that evokes the energy living inside MuMAC.

Visitors of Mumac, access via a new entrance: a coffee-colored wall identifies clearly such opening. The internal garden is limited by this coffee-coloured wall that is marked by nine trees which divide it into 10 equal spaces: ten decades of the century that symbolize the life and the achievements of Cimbali Group.

The museum area offers an exposition divided into six historical periods from the beginning of the century to the present day: The early years, The age of Rationalism, Invention of the lever, Under the banners of design, The International dimension and The New Millennium.

Area called The early years is characterized by a suspended ceiling and posters from Art Deco period. Exhibition of The age of Rationalism include a severe fascist colonnade and strict grid of orthogonal lines identifies the layout of the marble display stands.

In the area dedicated to the culture of the 50s and 60s we can find a reconstruction of a bar and an entirely cantilevered structure, that supports the machines of the period where thanks to cleverly positioned mirrors, visitors can enjoy both sides of these wonderful machines.

Under the banners of design is characterised by a collection of design masterpieces of the late ’60s and ’70s: great Masters of design have penned coffee machines in these decades, therefore these machine are actual design icons.

The New Millennium is where the display stands are coated in white resin and they smoothly emerge from the floor equally coated in white resin: this area portrays the most modern machines, those designed for an increasingly fast society. This room has a full height red volume, which is visible from any angle of the museum.

Within this volume is visible an installation of the new LaCimbali M100 coffee machine designed by Valerio Cometti+V12 Design: a daring exploded view that allows to grasp the technological content and the level of complexity of such machine, becoming an invitation to reflect on the extraordinary journey that the coffee machine has made during these last hundred years.

 

 

Location: Milan, Italy 
Architects: Arkispazio 
Project Team: Karolina Kolodziej, Massimo Lapenna, Roberto Lamanna 
Structural Engineering: Francesco Terreni 
Mep Engineering: Antonio Bozino 
Head Designers: Paolo Balzanelli, Valerio Cometti 
Area: 1,800 sqm 
Year: 2012 
Client: Gruppo Cimbali 
Photography: Angelo Margutti & Associati 
Software used: Autocad and 3d Studio Max

BLAFFER ART MUSEUM BY WORKAC

 

Founded in 1973, Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston is a contemporary art museum without a permanent collection, dedicated to emerging or under-represented artists.

 

The museum is located in the Fine Arts Building on the University of Houston's central campus and as such has currently very little visual presence.

 

 

The museum renovation project will offer a unique opportunity to connect the UH campus and the city of Houston through the medium of the Arts.

 

 

WORKac’s design opens up the currently blank north side with a new entrance pavilion; a translucent three-story volume that pivots forward from the existing façade, enhancing the museum’s presence to the city.

 

A new café/lounge will become a creative and intellectual social hub, and we have redesigned an existing courtyard, together with SCAPE landscape architects, as a dynamic setting, where music, film screenings and other events take place regularly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Location: Houston, USA

Architect: WORKac

Landscape: SCAPE

Year: 2011

KUNSTHALLE MANNHEIM BY GMP ARCHITEKTEN

The architects von Gerkan, Marg and Partners (gmp) have been awarded the contract to design the new Kunsthalle Mannheim. After three architect’s practices were awarded first place in a closed, anonymous competition back in July 2012, these practices were asked to revise their designs.

The practices were gmp, Staab Architects and Peter Pütz Architects. Irrespective of the negotiation procedure, an exhibition started in October at which the public were able to familiarize themselves with the three winning entries. The Kunsthalle design created by gmp portrays a symbolic identity, both on the outside and on the inside: the idea was to create a place that is easily remembered, and which appeals with its functional and urban quality.

Analogous to the chess board type layout of Mannheim’s inner city, the design is a composition of several cubes, the regularity of which is however broken by an offset arrangement in terms of height and width, and also by the arrangement of squares within the development. Visitors experience different sized rooms full of excitement and with a range of different air spaces. This creates a range of vistas inside and outside of the building.

With the concept of a louvred facade, the design clearly distinguishes itself from neighboring buildings in terms of its color scheme and materials. The intention was to choose a warm metal color which on the one hand does not replicate the red of the regional sandstone but, on the other hand, does not appear cold in spite of its timeless feel. The plain architecture, with its translucent facade envelope, radiates a strong presence.

The design, which was revised as part of the negotiation process, features a significantly reduced volume on the basement floor. To achieve this, the designers moved the delivery zone to the ground floor, which made it possible
to omit the ramp and other extensive circulation areas.

Furthermore, the detailed design of the technical building services revealed that less space was required, resulting in the second sub-floor no longer being necessary. Some of the services have been integrated in and on the roof areas, thus reducing the length of pipelines and ducting. In addition, the architects were able to incorporate improvements in many other areas of the new Kunsthalle Mannheim. In summary, all these measures mean that it will be possible to keep within the budget for the building.

 

Location: Mannheim, Germania

Architect: GMPARCHITEKTEN, Meinhard von Gerkan and Nikolaus Goetze with Volkmar Sievers

Project Manager: Di Miao

Design Team Ulrich Rösler, Mira Schmidt, Steffen Lepiorz, Liselotte Knall, Kai Siebke, Frederik Heisel

Lighting design: Conceptlicht Helmut Angerer

International competition: 2012 - 1st prize

Photo: Heiner Leiska

LOUVRE-LENS BY SANAA AND IMREY CULBERT

Wandering freely among Egyptian carvings and Roman mosaics, Islamic ceramics and Renaissance oils is a liberating experience, with the artefacts given new life freed from the damask-lined corridors of their Parisian parent. It feels like a private view inside the museum's out-of-town storage facility – with the concrete floors, metal walls and exposed beams to match.

"In the Louvre in Paris, everything is exhibited in rigid departments, like an encyclopaedia of art," says Adrien Gardère, responsible for the exhibition design of the Lens outpost. "Here we are bringing sculpture and painting together, from different periods and geographical areas, to create fruitful confrontations."

It is a radical curatorial approach that has not gone without criticism in the French press. Harry Bellet wrote in Le Monde that putting everything in one room risked it looking "like a bookshop where all the books are muddled up". He might not have realised that this is precisely the attraction: you never know what you might stumble upon next.

Another move that has raised museological eyebrows is the continuation of the clinical palette within the gallery itself, creating a space somewhat reminiscent of an industrial abattoir – six millennia of art history lined up for the slaughter. Yet the material surfaces are always elevated above the utilitarian. The brushed aluminium walls, gently warped, create a ghostly backdrop of reflections, a blurry mingling of people and artwork.

The concrete floor follows the sloping topography of the original site, a subtle move that reminds you where you are. The exposed steel roof beams, spanning the 25m width of the hall, have been slimmed to a miraculous 12mm thick, which allows natural light to wash over the space.

Beyond this principal Galerie du Temps, the building rises up into a glass pavilion for temporary exhibitions (currently filled with gigantic puppets from local street parades) with views across what will one day be a wild meadow landscape, designed by Catherine Mosbach.

Here, winding paths follow the original haulage routes across the site, punctuated by grassy worm-like landforms, which serve a dual function as picnic spots and ram-raiding defences – an increasingly common coupling in the current climate of terrorism-driven urban design.

The pairing of glass box and metallic shed is replicated the other side of the complex, in the form of the central entrance pavilion and secondary gallery space, currently arranged as a more conventional suite of rooms. The glazed entrance block is populated by Sanaa's trademark amoebic glass bubbles, containing bookshop, resource centre and members' area, which gleam like a cluster of petri dishes on a lab bench.

This disorienting space of transparencies and reflections forms the central fulcrum from which the gallery wings extend, with an auditorium beyond the second exhibition hall. From the entrance, a spiral stair – reminiscent of the one in the Louvre pyramid – descends into the bowels of the building, where you can look down on the storage racks and see conservation work in progress.

It is all part of the attempt to open up the museum to a broader audience, exposing this never-before-seen side of the institution. As a means of breathing fresh life into the Louvre's collection, and providing an overview of the history of art to a wider public, it is hard to fault this project.

Sanaa's architecture may seem materially alien to the site, but its combination of industrial utility and fragility is an apt reflection of the surrounding context – at once rugged and vulnerable (although perhaps slightly too vulnerable, in the brave choice of 2mm thick aluminium cladding). Source: Oliver Wainwright of The Guardian.

Since the construction launch of the satellite museum, the Louvre Museum has proceeded with its expansion plans, notably with the recent opening of the Cours d'Islam in Paris and the Louvre Abu Dhabi by Ateliers Jean Nouvel, currently under construction.

Location: Lens, France 
Architect: SANAA and Imrey Culbert 
Landscaping: MosbachPaysagistes 
Structural and facade planning: Bollinger + Grohmann 
Museography: StudioAdrien Gardère 
Total area: 28 000 m² 
Total exhibition area: 7000 m² (Great Gallery: 3 000 m²) 
GFA: 14,000 m² 
Glazing Area: 6,600 m² 
Roof area: 12,500 m² 
Auditorium: 280 seats 
Park total area:  20 ha 
Cost: € 150 million 
Competition: 2005 
Construction period: 2010 – 2012 
Opening: 4 December 2012 
Client: Regional Nord-Pas de Calais