Archinect - News

TBA's cozy Montreal home offers a private space for an art-collecting family

2022-02-07T14:55:00-05:00

Montreal’s Thomas Balaban Architecte (TBA) has returned to a core area of its practice with a new private residence for an art-collecting Quebecois family called the Berri House.

Challenged to “squeeze as much home as possible” out of a 112-year-old 130-square-meter (1,400-square-foot) carriage house located in the city’s Plateau Mont-Royal neighborhood, the small multidisciplinary studio responded with a well-anchored design that effectively balances limited space with the mandated local architectural character.

Photo: Adrien Williams

The solution involved a back-to-basics reset that left only the outline of the existing structure intact. TBA thus created a compact structure connected from top to bottom by a transparent sculptural wireframe staircase meant to allow maximal space and increase circulation at the ground level. A floating extension occupies the second floor, with a third and final story containing everything from a kitchen to coffee station and o...

A millionaire's scheme to build a home for his art collection inside a public park is drawing ire

2022-01-20T13:37:00-05:00

A Mexican multi-millionaire is building a replica of his northern Mexico mansion to serve as a museum for his art collection, an endeavor criticized because it is funded in large part with public money.

The millionaire in question, Mauricio Fernández Garza made his fortune selling beer and petrochemicals, which facilitated the collection of art and ancient fossils now valued at around $120 million. Garza was the three-time mayor of the tony Monterrey suburb where the house is located when plans to use public funding to fund up to 60% of what is essentially a vanity project. Garza’s original plan cost around $18 million before being reduced in scope to around $9.7 by new mayor Miguel Treviño, who defeated him in his latest bid for the position.

The mansion is named after a character in literature and was itself the apparent subject of a 2008 book about its owner’s transformative effort to mold a private residence to his liking. The result of that process is now being dismantled and reinstalled in a large public park nearby — including four 14th and 16th-century ceilings totaling $50 million acquired in a deal with his successor.

Tres Birds' design for the new Kohler Art Preserve hopes for a Marfa-like impact on Sheboygan

2021-06-29T19:01:00-04:00

The highly anticipated new satellite location of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center has finally opened this week in Sheboygan, Wisconsin following almost a year of Covid-related delays.

Dubbed “The Art Preserve,” the fantastic new 56,000-square-foot facility will serve as the home for the Center’s 25,000-object collection.

Photo: Durston Saylor, courtesy John Michael Kohler Arts Center

Tres Birds was instrumental in developing a plan that would respond to the Center’s focus on in-situ art environments. First, the design team had to structure the three-story exhibition space in a way that could allow exhibitions to recreate elements of the original spaces that the works were created in. The result is a tripartite structure whose “stick, earth, stone” elements are meant to embody the sterling natural environment of the surrounding Sheboygan River Basin.

Photo: Rich Maciejewski, courtesy John Michael Kohler Arts Center

Vis...

I.M. Pei's collection of art will go out to auction starting September

2019-08-30T07:00:00-04:00

Not only did they care deeply for the works, but in many cases they cared deeply for the artists themselves, like Jean Dubuffet and Barnett Newman. Both Eileen and I.M. Pei had incredibly creative minds and, unsurprisingly, they surrounded themselves with friends of equal talent and intellect.

I.M. Pei, and his wife, Eileen's collection of art will go to auction at Christie's starting in Paris in September, followed by Hong Kong and Los Angeles in October, and then New York in November. The auctions will feature artwork by Barnett Newman, Zao Wou-ki, Jean Dubuffet, Henry Moore, and many others, reports Architectural Digest.

Many of the artists were friends with the Peis and the work is sure to provide an intimate look into the life of the couple, writes AD's Nick Mafi.

A curator's take on a smaller 'expanded' LACMA

2019-06-17T15:51:00-04:00

[...] it’s worth considering one of the issues that drove so much of the criticism: the ideal—said to be lost in the soon-to-be-transformed institution—of the museum as an “encyclopaedia” of collections, one necessitating a particular form of architecture permanently exhibiting its collection in chronologically sequenced galleries organised by medium and culture.

Michael Conforti, former director of the Clark Art Institute and previously a curator at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and also at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, writes in defense of LACMA's controversial plan of a considerably smaller 'expansion,' designed by Peter Zumthor, citing curatorial shifts in recent decades.

Image: Atelier Peter Zumthor & Partner/The Boundary

"The early 21st-century art museum, civic and social space that it also is, is designed for a public expecting an equal experience with art, architecture and amenities, a public with little consciousness of the square footage applied to any one of these," explains Conforti's opinion piece in The Art Newspaper. "Los Angeles is now committed to building such a museum, doing so as it plans other sites for curatorial activity, ones responsive to its special urban condition. This seems appropriate [...]."

MoMA receives landmark gift of nine projects by Herzog & de Meuron

2019-01-25T14:49:00-05:00

The Museum of Modern Art has received a major donation courtesy of Herzog & de Meuron, whom have gifted the New York institution with materials relating to nine of their most influential built and unbuilt works. The contribution—which holds sketches, models, and architectural fragments as well as digital drawing sets and videos—will build upon the museum's previous collection of works by the Swiss firm, and bolster MoMA's vast and diverse holdings relating to architecture and design.

Herzog & de Meuron (Basel, est. 1978). 56 Leonard Street, New York, New York, USA. 2006–2008. Floor plans. Digital drawing files. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron Kabinett. Photo © Jacques Herzog und Pierre de Meuron Kabinett, Basel.

Herzog & de Meuron (Basel, est. 1978). 1111 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach, Florida, USA. 2005–2008. Exhibition model, scale 1:90. Oak, 18 11/16 × 26 × 22 1/16″ (47.5 × 66 × 56 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of t...

Architectural historian to manage Queen of England's vast art collection

2017-12-22T13:56:00-05:00

The Queen has appointed Tim Knox, 55, the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, to be the new director of the Royal Collection Trust. He has been the museum’s director since 2013 and is an architectural historian and country house curator. [...] His early career was spent at the Royal Institution of British Architects. He then served as the head curator of the National Trust (2002-05), from which he went on to be the director of the Sir John Soane’s Museum (2005-13).

"The Royal Collection is one of the world’s greatest, comprising more than a million objects from all aspects of fine and decorative art," The Art Newspaper writes. "It is not the personal property of The Queen, but is held in trust by Her Majesty for her successors and the nation."

Ettore Sottsass works in David Bowie's Memphis collection head to auction

2016-10-13T13:22:00-04:00

On November 11th in London, Sotheby's will be auctioning off the late great David Bowie's Memphis, Milano collection, which includes works by architect and designer Ettore Sottsass, Aldo Cibic, and Michele De Lucchi, among others. The works embody the Memphis movement's 1980s philosophy of 'New Design' which basically serves as the thesis for postmodernism, or as the movement's website puts it, "a new expressivity in the form of new shapes, materials and patterns."

For more on the intersection between music and design:

Damien Hirst's surprisingly restrained gallery space opens in London today

2015-10-08T15:30:00-04:00

For an artist who used to chop up cows and ambush people with his foreskin, his new south London HQ is notably subdued. The facade is not encrusted with dead butterflies nor diamond skulls, nor is there the clinical air that his eerie white production facility in Gloucestershire exudes. In fact, it looks a bit like a block of luxury docklands apartments – a couple of old brick warehouses with a polite in-keeping brick extension. Has the 50-year-old prankster finally grown up?

Previously on Archinect:

Opening of Damien Hirst’s new London art space scheduled for October

2015-06-30T15:57:00-04:00

Opening in October, Newport Street Gallery is the realisation of Hirst’s long-term ambition to share his diverse collection – which includes over 3,000 works – with the public. [...] Designed by architects Caruso St John, Newport Street Gallery spans 37,000 square feet, which includes a restaurant and shop. Its construction has involved the conversion of three listed Victorian buildings [...].

Previously: Damien Hirst's gallery development draws closer to completition

Do video games belong in fine art museum collections?

2015-02-09T15:33:00-05:00

The popularity of video games shows no sign of waning, and museums have ramped up their interest in the medium. [...] “Sorry MoMA, video games are not art” was the headline on Jonathan Jones’s blog [...] after New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) announced the acquisition of 14 video games, including 1980s classics “Tetris” and “Pac-Man”. “All hell broke loose in an interesting way,” said Paola Antonelli, a senior curator in the museum’s department of architecture and design [...].

Damien Hirst's gallery development draws closer to completition

2014-12-29T13:39:00-05:00

Damien Hirst’s new art complex in south London, which will house Modern and contemporary works drawn from the artist’s collection as well as natural history objects, will be free of charge when it opens to the public in 2015. After more than a decade in development, the gallery, which runs the length of Newport Street in Vauxhall, is due to open in the summer. [...] design by Caruso St John Architects, which converts and extends three Grade II-listed theatre carpentry workshops, in 2005.

Previously: Damien Hirst's London art space due to open next spring

Bass lifts the lid on treasure trove: interview with Peter Marino

2014-12-04T14:45:00-05:00

And do you live with as much of the collection as you can? Absolutely. I never keep fewer than five bronzes in my bedroom. It’s incredible that I have these things. I have them all round my bed—my little friends. I have very little money in the bank. I’m a hyper-materialist; enjoy it while you can. So many of my friends collect money in the way I collect art, but I don’t see the point.

Damien Hirst's London art space due to open next spring

2014-07-23T13:27:00-04:00

Damien Hirst’s art complex in south London, which was initially due to open this year, will take a little longer to complete. A spokeswoman for Science Ltd, Hirst’s company, says that it is now due to open “in May or June” next year. The centre, which is designed by Caruso St John architects, runs the length of Newport Street in Vauxhall. The former theatre carpentry and scenery production workshops will become six galleries. Office space and a restaurant are also planned.

Edifice Complex: Architecture Leaps From Commodity to Collectible

2014-07-16T15:20:00-04:00

[...] the Crystal Bridges acquisition reflects an increasingly popular attitude toward architecturally significant homes among private collectors. Such buyers now see that historic homes can be collected, preserved, and appreciated much like fine art.