Reshaping Museum Spaces - Architecture, Design, Exhibitions PDF

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Reshaping Museum Spaces: Architecture, Design, Exhibitions Politecnico di Milano Facoltà di Architettura e Società Laurea Magistrale in Architettura degli Interni Building Museum Prof. L. Basso Peressut Prof. G. Postiglione Delphine Aboohi SUMMARY Introduction 3 SECTION I. ON THE NATURE OF MUSEUM S...

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Reshaping Museum Spaces Architecture, Design, Exhibitions Delphine Aboohi

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Reshaping Museum Spaces: Architecture, Design, Exhibitions Politecnico di Milano Facoltà di Architettura e Società Laurea Magistrale in Architettura degli Interni Building Museum Prof. L. Basso Peressut Prof. G. Postiglione

Delphine Aboohi

SUMMARY

Introduction

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SECTION I. ON THE NATURE OF MUSEUM SPACE

1. Architecture as a driver of urban regeneration 2. Space and the machine: new technology in the museum space

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SECTION II. ARCHITECTURAL RESHAPING

1. From cultural institution to cultural consumer experience

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SECTION III. INSIDE SPACES

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1. The narrative space 2. When studio becomes gallery 3. Constructing and communicating equality

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SECTION IV. CREATIVE SPACE

1. The vital museum

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SECTION V. THOUGHTS

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THE CONTRIBUTORS

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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WEBLIOGRAPHY

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FIGURES

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INTRODUCTION

Reshaping Museum Spaces: Architecture, Design, Exhibitions is a book edited by Suzanne MacLeod, emerged out of a conference held at the University of Leicester in April 2004. The book is composed of seventeen chapters, written by different authors, which are divided in four sections that would like to lead to one idea: how come museums had such a radical reshaping in the recent years. Each author explains, with some examples, his own opinion about what are the most evident reasons of these changes, both on the architectural (inside and outside), social and cultural aspects. The authors keep questioning what kind of types the new museum spaces are required, and highlighting a range of possibilities for creative museum design. The authors reflect about the complexity, significance and malleability of museum space, which is always open to change. In the recent years, while museums became consciously «recognized as drivers for social and economic regeneration, the architecture of the museum has developed from its traditional forms into often-spectacular one-off statements and architectural visions»1. Unfortunately, the most highlighted example of this phenomenon, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao designed by Frank O. Gehry, that succeeded 1

S. MacLeod, Reshaping Museum Space: Architecture, Design, Exhibitions, in S. MacLeod, edited by, Routledge, Oxon 2005, p. 2.

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to transform a provincial city in Spain into a touristic destination, isn’t explained enough but only mentioned as the «Bilbao Effect» (known as the power of iconic architecture to place a city on the cultural map). Also other iconic museum architectures such as Berlin’s Jewish Museum or Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati are absent. In parallel, Suzanne MacLeod and the other authors try to analyze the reciprocal relationship between construed and curated space, or in other words, between museum building, exhibition and exposed objects. The different of approaches about the book’s topics result as a mix of descriptions; in certain cases the description is structured by the author’s opinion on a specific topic (architecture or exhibition) lead by some examples. In other cases the authors choose to give only a detailed description of one/two museums and their exhibition, in order to touch both arguments (architecture and exhibition) which results more complicated to understand. I think that an interesting result of this book stays on the comparison between the different opinions on the same topics, and in this way I try to compose this summary. I followed the book four sections, trying, from one hand, to bring all author’s viewpoints, and from the other hand to have a logical connection between the different parts, considering also my own position and adding some comments from other books.

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SECTION I. ON THE NATURE OF MUSEUM SPACE

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1. Architecture as a driver of urban regeneration

History books suggest us to observe, to judge, to define architecture, and especially museum architecture, mostly by its aesthetic and functional aspects, but taking a look at the last decades of the twentieth century we can realize that the issue became more complex and recognize architecture as a driver of urban regeneration, which is in continually production through occupation and use. The complexity of an architecture building stands by the fact that architecture, today, is a social and cultural product, which should be able to answer for the society needs, in a specifically time, space and context. The rule of the architect as the guideline in its production is over, since that the use of a building, as a museum for example, involves much more individuals as architects, designers, project managers, directors, curators and not at least, users. «The architect and user both produce architecture, the former by design, the latter by use. As architecture is experienced, it is made by the user as much as the architect»1. An interesting fact is that in the most of the museum pictures, the museum is empty, as we need to appreciate it sui generis – without the distraction of occupancy and use. The relationship between architecture and society is still

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S. MacLeod, Reshaping Museum Space: Architecture, Design, Exhibitions, in S. MacLeod, edited by, Routledge, Oxon 2005, p. 20.

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double in our minds. From one hand, we are aware that the museum production is continual and ongoing through occupation and use, but from the other we are still afraid to face its spaces full of people. The transformation of a given place into a practiced space, a museum place making, is a result of the actions of different individuals which can be decomposed into more levels: Urban planners designate a place for a new museum in the geometry redevelopment. An architect takes the constraints of this assignment and designs a new space for a science museum. Museum staff takes the given place of the museum and designate the varied museum spaces. Finally, the museum visitors transform the given place they enter by how they use and travel through it1.

As I mentioned in the introduction, the most emblematic example of architecture as a driver of urban regeneration is the construction of the Guggenheim Museum in the city of Bilbao in Spain, opened in 1997, by the Candian architect Frank O. Gehry. «The ‘Bilbao Effect’ became a popular term after Frank Gehry built the Guggenheim Museum in Spain, transforming the poor industrial port city of Bilbao into a must-see tourist destination. Its success spurred other cities into hiring famous architects and giving them carte blanche to design even more spectacular buildings in the hopes that the formula could be repeated»2.

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R Toon, Reshaping Museum Space: Architecture, Design, Exhibitions, in S. MacLeod, edited by, Routledge, Oxon 2005, p. 35. 2 Retrieved from the official website of the New York Branch of the American Institute of Architects on 2 May 2010. For more information: http://cfa.aiany.org/index.php?section=calendar&evtid=1579

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The revitalization of Bilbao’s metropolitan region included also a huger strategic plan, involving other architects as Norman Foster (for the subway system), Santiago Calatrava (for the new airport), Cesar Pelli, Zaha Hadid and Arata Isozaki (both for the master plan of Abandoibarra’s area, where the museum is located). Urban development was promoted through large-scale projects including infrastructures and public facilities, but also hotels, residential building and malls. Bilbao nowadays is one of the most expensive areas in the country.

Figure 1. The Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao

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An intersect aspect about urban regeneration by culture stays at the ‘Third World’ museology, where the International Council of Museums (ICOM), which represents the most important forum about this issue, strengthen cultural identity and consciousness in the face of rapid and world-wide cultural change, strengthen national identity within an internationalized system of states and make use of the educational potential of museums in the context of development3. The 1982 ICOM study by De la Torre and Monreal, Museums: An Investment for Development, approves the relationship between the number of museums and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) proposed as an indicator of social development, positioning each society within an international hierarchy. «A similar approach is to be found in Hudson and Nicholls’ ‘Foreword to their Directory, likewise making a direct link to GDP: “… developing countries will make great sacrifices in order to have museums, which are needed both to reinforce and confirm a sense of national identity and to give status within the world community. To have no museums, in today’s circumstances, is to admit that one is below the minimum level of civilization required of a modern state”4»5.

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These functional definitions are derived from the UNESCO/ICOM periodical Museum for the period 1972-92, on the ICOFOM Study series of the Museological Committee of ICOFOM within ICOM. 4 K. Hudson, A. Nicholls, edited by, Directory of Museums and Living Displays, Macmillan, London 1985. 5 M. Prösler, Theorizing Museums, in S. Macdonald, G. Fyfe, edited by, Blackwell, Oxford 1996, p. 24.

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2. Space and the machine: new technology in the museum space

Another interesting aspect in the evolution of the museum as a social and cultural product is about his reciprocal relationship with the digital media. During the twentieth century we might identify some phases with which the ICT (Information and Communications Technology) conquer the museum and the galleries spaces. We can observe a huge development of the ICT systems in the museum in the last sixty years; in the middle of the twentieth century, ICT was completely out of the museum building while during the time ICT begin to infiltrate into the museum’s spaces, first as a support to the management, documentation and research, and then in a larger presence through computers, video screens, sound systems, websites and so on. Nowadays digital ICT is (when applicable) integrated so deeply into the practices of curators and designers, harmonized so thoughtfully and appropriately into the interpretive strategy of the exhibit, and embedded so seamlessly into the fabric of the gallery, that it becomes an integral and ambient component of the exhibition. In this praxis digital ICT is no longer something to be conceived separately but rather (like object, text panel, display case) is assimilated as simply another property of what an exhibition is6.

This strong and complex penetration of digital media into the museums makes me wonder if, in the coming decades, the museum building won’t be just a sweet memory of the past, while we will visit the virtual museum online. Due 6 R Parry, A. Sawyer, Reshaping Museum Space: Architecture, Design, Exhibitions, in S. MacLeod, edited by, Routledge, Oxon 2005, p. 46.

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to the fact the that museum is in continues evolution, I guess that the first conclusion we can make is that we should design museums that are flexible, malleable, easy to change, multifunctional, multitasking, suitable to the social and cultural developments. As the architect Rem Koolhaas says in an interview in Iconeye: «any architectural project we do takes at least four or five years, so increasingly there is a discrepancy between the acceleration of culture and the continuing slowness of architecture»7. I would like to return to the delicate relationship between museums and technology. In 1967, the French philosopher Michel Foucault presented for the first time his idea for «Of Other Places», where he anticipated some thoughts (published only later in 1984) that are completely contemporary: «The idea of accumulating everything, of establishing a sort of general archive, the will to enclose in one place all times, all epochs, all forms, all tastes, the idea of constituting a place of all times that it itself outside of time and inaccessible to its ravages, the project of organizing in this way a sort of perpetual and indefinite accumulation of time in an immobile place, this whole idea belongs to our modernity. The museum and the library are heterotopias8 that are proper to western culture of the nineteenth century»9.

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Iconeye: Icon Magazine Online, June 2004. To the interview: http://www.iconeye.com/read-previousissues/icon-013-|-june-2004/rem-koolhaas-|-icon-013-|-june-2004 8 Heterotopias – a concept elaborated by Foucault to describe places and spaces that function in nonhegemonic conditions. These are spaces of otherness, which are neither here nor there, that are simultaneously physical and mental, such as the space of a phone call or the moment when you see yourself in the mirror. In the mirror, I see myself there where I am not, in an unreal, virtual space that opens up behind the surface; I am over there, there where I am not, a sort of shadow that gives my own visibility to myself, that enables me to see myself there where I am absent: such is the utopia of the mirror. But it is also a heterotopia in so far as the mirror does exist in reality, where it exerts a sort of counteraction on the position that I occupy. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterotopia_%28space%29 : http://foucault.info/documents/heterotopia/foucault.heterotopia.en.html For more information: http://www.heterotopiastudies.com/ 9 M. Foucault, Des Espace Autres, Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité, n°5, Octobre 1984, pp. 46-49, English version Of Other Places, translated by Jay Miskowiec.

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That leads me to the idea of conjoining of multiple realities into a real, temporal space. Our current radically technologized experience seems to be right within Foucault’s idea. The simultaneous human being is already used to navigate between different spaces and times, in high speed velocity. «In the transformation of culture from one of objects to one of information, museums have developed […] a number of new roles. Curatorial considerations can […] now include anything from digitised virtual objects, to a piece of software, to a web-link resident on someone else’s physical serving computer»10. We might propose exhibitions and collections that emphasize techno-genealogies, showing the provenance, resonant and reproductive effects of a networkedmuseum-object. The new type of spatial orientation in galleries is provided by a secondary mediation of the displayed object by their recontextualisation through images and sounds in one hand and the interactive experience on the other. «Both these media, once incorporated into the museum, blur the boundaries between the museum’s private space and the public world […]. But they also blur the boundaries between the individual’s private space and the public space of the museum, […] reinforcing the familiar elision of domestic and public which the consumption of television, in particular, tends to produce»11.

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J. Allen, D. Gauthier, K. Reitan Andersen, Museums in an Age of Migrations: Questions, Challenges, Perspectives, in L Basso Peressut, C. Pozzi, edited by, Mela Books, Milano 2012, pp. 164-165. 11 R. Silverstone, Towards the Museum of the Future: New European Perspectives, in R. Miles, L. Zavala, edited by, Routledge, Oxfodrshire 1994, pp. 172-173.

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Figure 2. Baluardo – The Virtual Museum of the City of Lucca, Studio Azzurro. A real museum made by only monitors and screensin order to tell the history of the city

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SECTION II. ARCHITECTURAL RESHAPING

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1. From cultural institution to cultural consumer experience

An interesting study has been done about the power of space to influence the visitor’s experience in museums and galleries. In order to do so, we took in exam four museums in Britain. Two contemporary museums – the Art Gallery and Museum Kelvingrove and the Natural History Museum – and two historical museums – the Burrell Museum and the Museum of Scotland. The museum’s plans were analyzed by the program Space Syntax1 (developed by Hillier at UCL), which studies spatial characteristics and relates them to the patterns of movement, use and cultural meaning. The result of this type of analysis is that the most integrated elements, in all museums, are the main hall and the axes that link this space with the main entrance and galleries. On the other hand, the top floors are generally segregated. The clear structure on the ground floor has become much more complex on the upper levels. Such a result is very interesting, due to the fact that even if the museums fall into two different categories, some characteristics seem to be similar. This fact leads us to the question: why are some areas segregated? According to Sophia Psarra «in the contemporary buildings segregation results from an architectural device based on layered stratification that mediates the relationship between different parts of the layout. In the other two museums it

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For more information: http://www.spacesyntax.com/

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is the outcome of the exhibition design»2. I guess that during the years the architects’ approach to the building complexity did change.

Figure 3. Levels of integration at (a) the Art Gallery and Museum, Kelvingrove, Glasgow, (b) the Natural History Museum, London, (c) the Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, and (d) the Burrell Museum, Glasgow. Light tones show high levels of integration. Dark tones show progressive segregation 2 S Psarra, Reshaping Museum Space: Architecture, Design, Exhibitions, in S. MacLeod, edited by, Routledge, Oxon 2005, p. 85.

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Due to the last considerations, we can ask another question: what is the impact of the spatial configuration on the use pattern? In order to answer to this question, we may consider also the average number of people observed in each space. Studies on the Kelvingrove and the Burrell Museums lead us to the fact that seventy per cent of the variance in the route of people is determined by the structure of the layout. The result of this study is extremely important to understand how to construct the visitor experience. Museums are communicating environments in which complex meanings are negotiated. They are consumed in a multitude of different ways by visitors. «They are structured narratively, by principles of classification and representation that create stories or arguments, or perhaps a more open logic, and which provide a framework or a route through which the visitors pass and in relation to which they make sense of what is seen»3. The next case study is the Grande Galerie de l’Evolution in Paris, museum that was opened for the first time in the eighteenth century, had been close for over 25 years and then reopened in 1994. The new project, of the architects Paul Chemtov and Borja Huidobro in collaboration with the artist René Allio focused on the use of the light as a model reshaping of the various spaces. The main tools used by the designers, in order to translate the characteristics of each natural ecosystem, are lights, sounds, colors and distribution of specimens, with few written pieces. The aim was to create a multisensory atmosphere where the feeling is of being immersed in a world full of mysteries. The important conclusion of this project depends on satisfa...