Gardner Museum Expansion | Fenway

Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

Funny ... if that is the model for the Gardner expansion, then it just happens to look a lot like the Morgan Library ... Take the same basic concept (rectangles, hard edges, sharp corners, glass, semi-permeable walls) and scale it up (NYT building), out (Art Institute of Chicago) or around (ok, I don't know what that one means). I can't help but feel that Piano is a bit of a one-trick pony.
 
Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

All "starchitects" are. Plus the Morgan Library is pretty sweet. I hope this turns out as nice.
 
Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

Is it better to do one thing well, or many things adequately?
 
Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

You have a point, itchy.

As a former detractor who has visited a few of Piano's buildings, it's a pretty good trick. There's a craft to forthrightly showing a building's bones. Calatrava tries to do it in some of his work, but it's just too polished. And there's an austerity to some of Piano's work that makes me think of Louis Kahn (materials palate be damned).
 
Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

January 21, 2010
Architecture Review | Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
An Architect Pays Respects to a Dowager
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF

BOSTON ? More than a few eyebrows will likely be raised on Thursday when the Italian architect Renzo Piano unveils his design for the expansion of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum here.

The cultural watchdogs of Boston don?t take well to change. And the museum, whose collections haven?t moved since 1924, is one of the most beloved art institutions in this city. Its eclectic array of artworks from the Middle Ages to the early-20th century, displayed in a dazzling faux-Venetian palazzo, stands alongside those in the Frick Collection in Manhattan and the Getty Villa in Malibu, Calif., as a rare ? and intimate ? expression of a single collector?s vision.

Well, the preservationists should put away their torches and pitchforks. Mr. Piano?s design, dominated by a four-story copper-clad volume that encloses a 300-seat music hall and a temporary-exhibitions gallery, keeps a respectful distance from the Venetian dowager. And the new building?s strong geometric forms should make a welcome counterpoint to the old one, which, from the outside at least, has always seemed a bit bland.

If the design has a flaw, it?s not that it tramples all over Gardner?s memory, but that it holds it in too high regard. Mr. Piano has been so careful to protect the sanctity of the existing museum in his design that you may find yourself tiptoeing through the galleries instead of floating joyously through them as visitors do today.

...
Click to expand...

Full article...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/arts/design/21gardner.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
 
Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

Includes better rendering/model:

articleLarge.jpg


popup.jpg
 
Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

ablarc said:
Saarinen wasn't.
Click to expand...

He wasn't practicing long enough to get stale. Had he lived longer you know every office park would have looked the same at some point.
 
Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

vanshnookenraggen said:
He wasn't practicing long enough to get stale. Had he lived longer you know every office park would have looked the same at some point.
Click to expand...
Like Mozart, he had a complete artistic trajectory in a short life. There's no real reason to think that that he would have lapsed into solipsism in late life.
 
Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

Saarinen was before my time, but can we really think of him as a starchitect? My sense is that architecture flew much more below the radar then than it has in the last ten years.
 
Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

Ablarc, if we're making a musical comparison, I'd be more inclined to link Saarinen with Stravinsky. Both were chameleons. A more contemporary analog would be Bowie, or Madonna.
 
Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

czsz said:
Saarinen was before my time, but can we really think of him as a starchitect? My sense is that architecture flew much more below the radar then than it has in the last ten years.
Click to expand...

He met with presidents and kings, was on the cover of Time and countless other magazines, and crafted some of the iconic symbols of the American 20th century in the St. Louis Arch, his furniture, and the Dulles and JFK airport terminals. I'd say his star hung higher than all but maybe a handful of "starchitects" today
 
Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

czsz said:
Saarinen was before my time, but can we really think of him as a starchitect?
Click to expand...
Yes. Actually, more than any architect, he defined the concept.

My sense is that architecture flew much more below the radar then than it has in the last ten years.
Click to expand...
Nope. You can believe that just because you weren't there.
 
Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

Damn, okay. So was he a fluke or has starchitecture really always been with us?
 
Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

czsz said:
Damn, okay. So was he a fluke or has starchitecture really always been with us?
Click to expand...
A thoughtful question. Don't know the answer. Got to think about that for at least half a day.
 
Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

czsz said:
Damn, okay. So was he a fluke or has starchitecture really always been with us?
Click to expand...

Frank Lloyd Wright was even beyond Saarinen as a living cultural icon. If you've never watched his interviews with Mike Wallace they are very worth finding on the internet.....

I don't know the roots of architect as high profile cultural driver, but I know many were well known and regarded in their own contemporary society: Gropius, Stanford White, FL Olmsted are the first names that come to mind. Christopher Wren was knighted. Michaelangelo and Jefferson were obviously famous beyond just being architects..... Imhotep too.

Damn, architects have been rockstars forever i guess. I think Thag the Stonelifter was relatively under the radar though.
 
Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

briv said:
I dont see what the urgency was for demolition. It would be one thing if construction was imminent, but it isn't, and in this economic climate, there are questions as to whether the expansion will ever happen at all.

This appears to be just another case of a property owner demolishing a structure simply to render any potential questions pertaining to its preservation as irrelevant. That practice hasn't really served the city very well.
Click to expand...
They should just engage a high-powered detective agency to retrieve their Vermeer, and forget the whole thing.

Gardner was world-class when preserved in amber. Now it'll be just another art museum, with programs.
 
Re: Gardner Museum to undertake $60 million expansion

HH Richardson was a starchitect.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top