New Museums

The lead article in the October 2004 issue of Architectural Record, devoted to contemporary museums, noted that 'museums continue to proliferate across the international landscape, leading to the conclusion that, post-Bilbao, every municipality seems to want a smash.' Certainly, following the opening of Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, museums gained a newfound cache among architects and clients. The mission and purpose of the museum is rapidly evolving: museums today are frequently more than repositories for historical art, as they can be research centres, memorials, contemporary galleries, or site-specific artworks in themselves. Often, they are all of these things at once.

New Museums documents the best of new museum design and features 27 projects in 13 countries in Europe, the United States, Israel and Japan. The architects represented are among the most renowned practitioners in the world today. In addition to Gehry, they include van Berkel + Bos, Santiago Calatrava, Zaha Hadid, Kengo Kuma and Alvaro Siza, as well as lesser-known yet uniquely talented designers such as Zvi Hecker in Israel and Diener & Diener in Switzerland. An illustrated general introduction discusses well-known historical precedents, as well as current themes that are relevant to museum design: the museum as a neutral container, its role in placing art in context, the museum as an addition to an existing building and as a distinct work of art. Each project is thoroughly documented with colour photographs, plans, drawings and a project description by a widely published architecture critic.

In its totality, the presentation of the book itself is an accomplishment in design.

Raul A Barreneche, a New York-based editor and critic, has been writing about architecture and design for more than 10 years. A former executive editor at Architecture, he writes regularly for The New York Times. He is currently a contributing editor to Metropolitan Home, Travel + Leisure and Architectural Record, and has written for Dwell, House Beautiful, i-D, ELLE Décor, Interior Design and Wallpaper* and other publications. Barreneche is co-author of House: American Houses for the New Century (2001), and author of Tropical Modern (2003).

A survey of 27 innovative new museums around the world by internationally prominent architects such as Herzog + de Meuron, Steven Holl, Renzo Piano and Yoshio Taniguchi, among others
Documents a wide range of museums serving many functions and includes research centres, memorials, contemporary galleries and small museums devoted to single collectors
High-profile projects, including the Great Court at the British Museum, London, by Foster + Partners; the Rosenthal Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, by Zaha Hadid; and the Jewish Museum, Berlin, by Daniel Libeskind
Each project is presented in depth with superior colour photographs of exteriors and interiors, plans, drawings, and descriptive text by a widely published architecture critic
Includes projects in Western Europe, the United States, Israel and Japan