| |
Shift: SANAA and the New Museum, edited by Joseph
Grima & Karen Wong
Lars Müller Publishers, 2008
Tadao
Ando Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, by Philip
Jodidio
Rizzoli, 2008
These two books on two recent museums by Japanese architects
-- 2005's Modern
Art Museum of Fort Worth by Tadao Ando and last year's
New
Museum in New York City by SANAA
-- are as different from each other as the buildings and
their locales. Where the former's horizontality and repetition
relates to its larger and immediate context, the latter's
varied verticality relates to its prominent and deeply historical
Manhattan site. The books cater, respectively, to a more
general, cultured audience and architects in particular.
Even though the Modern's site in Texas outside Dallas
is a significant part of its being, it is not as important
-- to the architect and the author -- as its location across
the street from the Kimbell
Art Museum, Louis I. Kahn's masterpiece of concrete
and light. The Modern's six parallel bays reiterate the
Kimbell's famous ellipsoid vaults, but the differences between
the buildings are stronger than this intentional similarity.
The scale of Ando's building and its interior spaces is
much larger than Kahn's intimate gallery spaces. Additionally,
where the Kimbell's relationship to its green site occurs
at the front door -- with small internal courtyards helping
to make the focus of the museum an introverted one -- the
Modern turns its back to its context -- placing a parking
lot between it and the Kimbell, of all things -- by focusing
on a pond cradled by the six bays and the elliptical cafe.
Jodidio's book includes a lengthy
essay on the building and the architect, with extensive
quotes from the latter, many taken from curator Michael
Auping's Seven Interviews with Tadao
Ando, a book highly recommended for insight into
Ando's approach to architecture. Jodidio's text is accompanied
by numerous photographs and sketches, primarily the former.
Auping contributes a section on how he chose art for the
primarily non-white-box gallery spaces of Ando's creation.
His text illustrates how important the role of the curator
is in the success of museum architecture; a museum that
doesn't successfully interact with art is not a successful
museum.
The New
Museum, on the other hand, sits in the densely urban
context of Manhattan. Here zoning restrictions dictate more
than iconic neighbors, though the grit and history of the
Bowery is certainly an important aspect of both the New
Museum's site selection and the architect's approach to
the building's appearance. SANAA's primary design gesture
is to shift six stacked boxes, addressing both the site's
zoning envelope and the desire for natural sunlight in the
galleries. Outside of the main floor's transparent wall,
the building closes itself off from its context, layering
an aluminum mesh over a white backdrop to create a sometimes
shimmering and ethereal skin. This appealing aspect of the
design receives a good deal of attention in this book, as
do other details, from its "hidden" stair to the small gap
between the floor and wall at the building's perimeter.
The drawings and description of the latter are a good example
of how this book is aimed at architects. Being one, I can
admit it's a very interesting read, like hearing about the
difficulties that SANAA and the local architects had to
deal with, such as the way subtle shifts in the apparently
seamless mesh would affect the rest of the building.
The greatest difference between these
two books comes across is what both books share, the requisite
photographs of their interiors. Where the New Museum's admittedly
white-box gallery spaces (the antithesis of Fort Worth's
galleries) are presented with museum-goers as well as art,
the Modern's galleries are primarily empty. These opposite
means of presentation say more about the museum themselves
than just the architecture: the empty galleries of the Modern
show the importance of the permanent collection and the
"site-specific" relationship of the art with the building,
while the crowded galleries of the New Museum are in tune
with a museum focused on the new that provides a neutral
backdrop to the ever-changing exhibitions. The art world
has room for both these approaches, and each could exist
in the other city, in a different guise, as these two buildings
make clear that context is as important as what's inside.
or 
for New Museum
or
for Modern Fort Worth |
