Contemporary Museum Architecture and Design

Theory and Practice of Place

Georgia Lindsay

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429664847
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

Contemporary Museum Architecture and Design showcases 18 diverse essays written by people who design, work in, and study museums, offering a variety of perspectives on this complex building type. Throughout, the authors emphasize new kinds of experiences that museum architecture helps create, connecting ideas about design at various levels of analysis, from thinking about how the building sits in the city to exploring the details of technology.

With sections focusing on museums as architectural icons, community engagement through design, the role of gallery spaces in the experience of museums, disability experiences, and sustainable design for museums, the collected chapters cover topics both familiar and fresh to those interested in museum architecture. Featuring over 150 color illustrations, this book celebrates successful museum architecture while the critical analysis sheds light on important issues to consider in museum design.

Written by an international range of museum administrators, architects, and researchers this collection is an essential resource for understanding the social impacts of museum architecture and design for professionals, students, and museum-lovers alike.

PART 1

ICONS

Interrogating Spectacle and Design

Museum architecture is often called upon to do more than just hold objects and people—additionally buildings are asked to be works of art in and of themselves. Buildings serve to identify not just the museum but also the city surrounding it. This section takes seriously the signaling role that museum architecture is asked to take on and interrogate the results of iconic design. Macgregor draws on her experience in commissioning new buildings for two institutions to conclude that instead of starchitecture, what makes museum buildings great is the ability to engage the public and to provide enough flexibility to accommodate evolving art forms. Dreher, Alaily-Mattar, and Thierstein investigate how the decision to build an iconic building has affected the Kunsthaus Graz in Austria. And Goldberg-Miller opens the black box of policy to identify the policy-makers and administrators who make a project happen. Taken together, these authors demonstrate that decisions made at one level of analysis—in this case, choosing starchitecture to benefit the city—have implications for the other functions inside museums.

chapter 1

Iconic or Engaging?

Beyond the Spectacle

Elizabeth Ann Macgregor

As the director of two contemporary art galleries that have undergone a major architectural conversion – one in Birmingham, United Kingdom; the other in Sydney, Australia – my main motivation has been to deepen audience engagement with contemporary art and artists.

While the exterior of a new building captures public attention initially, it is the gallery’s programs and the success of the visitor experience in the building that leads to long-term audience engagement. The potential benefits of reusing old buildings to exhibit contemporary art can be overlooked in the temptation to build new, iconic structures.

In 1993 the UK Government passed the National Lotteries etc. Act. It was a new and somewhat controversial initiative that had a significant impact on the ecology of the arts, with 25% of the profits after costs allocated to ‘good causes’, one of which in the initial years was capital funding for the arts via the Arts Council of England. The timing was fortuitous for one gallery in the Midlands: the Ikon Gallery.

The Ikon was founded in Birmingham in 1963 by a small group of artists. In its programming, Ikon was a pioneer in responding to the issues of the 1990s, when artists from different cultural backgrounds were challenging the white (male) bias of the art world. There was an increasing awareness of the breadth of exciting contemporary work being produced around the world, not just in the so-called major centres of London and New York. Ikon’s program reflected this broadening of the international agenda as well as including artists from different backgrounds living in Britain.

As director since 1989, I had been seeking permanent premises for the gallery as the lease on the existing warehouse conversion was due to expire. Following a discussion with the Board, we made the decision not to renew the lease but to seek new premises for several reasons. Foremost was the desire for long-term stability and financial certainty that a building owned by the gallery would provide. A close second was the imperative to place the gallery nearer to the city center. Central to the gallery’s mission was the objective to broaden its visitor base and find an easily accessible location where people could ‘drop in’ rather than make a special trip. For Ikon, with its commitment to access, finding a location that encouraged new audiences was of paramount importance.

This mission dictated the kind of location appropriate for the new gallery. Contemporary art then had few household names – even now there are probably only a handful. Strategies to broaden audiences, therefore, had to go beyond hosting blockbuster shows by celebrity artists. Moreover, the perceived elitism of arts institutions and in particular contemporary art galleries was a challenge to reaching new audiences. The derision in the media that greeted the annual announcement of the Tate’s Turner Prize, including kneejerk references to the ‘man in the street’ (whoever he might be), reveals the popular attitude of the times – and not just in the tabloid press. There was also increased pressure from funding bodies for the arts to be more accessible and attract broader audiences, and rightly so.

Eventually a building was identified, on a development site in the middle of the city, on the canal, right behind a new convention centre that houses the wonderful home of the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. The building was a derelict 19th-century school, built in 1877, with Grade 2 heritage listing – an important remnant of the Victorian architecture of Birmingham in its heyday.

The Ikon Board discussed the merits and challenges of such a project. As a listed building, there would be restrictions on what renovations could be done and the gallery would need to work sensitively with the heritage bodies. The interior had fallen into great disrepair, but the Board and I felt that a sensitive conversion could utilize the high volume of the old classrooms. The building would not offer the neutral warehouse spaces so often synonymous with contemporary art galleries, which we perceived to be an asset – the building could provide spaces that were good for exhibiting art, but were also user-friendly. One of the barriers to attracting visitors who were not already art aficionados was the stark and unwelcoming architecture of many contemporary art spaces. The very fact that the building was historic in a city where much of the heritage had been destroyed meant that it was much loved. It had a history with the immediate community as a school building and sat in one of the most deprived areas of the city, right next to the city center. The public’s affection for the building was an advantage that the gallery would be able to build on when seeking to engage new audiences.

Levitt Bernstein Associates, which had undertaken the adaptive reuse of a historic building into the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester and initial conversion of an old building on the water into the magical Pier Arts Centre in Orkney, was appointed by the Board to explore options for adaptive reuse of the former school into an art gallery. As we began our deliberations, lead architect Axel Burroughs and I undertook a research trip, visiting several important museum buildings to see what we could learn. We chose some of the most obvious and lauded buildings, but our findings were not what we expected.

We were surprised by the level of dysfunction of these buildings experienced by museum staff and exhibiting artists. In many cases, the staff had not been closely involved in the drawing up of the brief nor in its interpretation. What was seen to be successful (iconic) in architectural terms fell far short in terms of museum operations. We therefore set ourselves the task of designing a user-friendly building appropriate for showing contemporary art in its many forms. The designs were prepared and submitted for lottery funding along with the required business plans.

Here the project hit a roadblock. The Ikon was one of the first applicants for lottery funding. The proposal met all the criteria for funding with one exception – the architecture was deemed ‘inappropriate’ for a contemporary gallery. This initial rejection led to a (somewhat nerve-wracking) debate with the Arts Council and its assessors about who should decide what kind of architecture was appropriate for a contemporary gallery. It became clear in subsequent meetings that the architectural assessors were seeking an iconic building, not a conversion of a pre-existing historical building. One assessor commented that we should have found a greenfield site in order to commission a ‘great building’. The assessors also had objections to the internal layout of the building, in particular the cafe and museum shop being situated on the ground floor rather than galleries, something which had been decided by the architect after a long process of trying out different solutions with the staff and which answered the need to generate revenue.

In the end, the Ikon won the argument; the project got the funding, the building was completed in 1998, and, to our delight, it went on to win the RIBA Award 1999 and Royal Fine Art Commission Trust Building of the Year Award (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK. Original design by John Henry Chamberlain in 1877; restoration design by Levitt Bernstein Associates and completed in 1998. Photograph: Greg Jones, courtesy The Handover Agency.

The opening night proved correct the predictions made about increased audience engagement; local people queued to get in, many of whom had never visited a contemporary art gallery before. While the building was being constructed, an extensive outreach program of artists working with the local community included a project about people’s memories of the school. Artists also responded to the renovated building with enthusiasm (Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2 Installation view of Nancy Spero: Parade, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 1998. Opening exhibition in the new Ikon. Photograph: Greg Jones, courtesy The Handover Agency.

Interestingly, when Tate was considering adapting the former Bankside power station into Tate Modern, there was also criticism from some within the architectural community for not commissioning a new building. In its deliberations, Tate undertook a survey of artists that revealed an overwhelming preference for the adaptive reuse of an old building. It is interesting to note that a number of ‘iconic’ buildings supported by the national lottery in the early years failed to achieve the results predicted in their business plans. The Public in West Bromwich and the National Centre for Popular Music in Sheffield for example did not survive, demonstrating that spectacular new buildings do not always lead to success.

Not long after the new Ikon Gallery opened, I moved to Sydney to run another gallery in an old building – the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA). The Museum had opened in 1991, in an adaptive reuse by architect Andrew Andersons of Peddle Thorp/John Holland Interiors of the old Maritime Services Board building. It is situated on one of Australia’s most important sites: the location of First Contact between Indigenous and European peoples, which marks the beginning of the country’s colonial history. It is also one of the most beautiful sites in the world, right opposite the Sydney Opera House, a structure that contradicts the above thesis about the inadequacies of iconic buildings (Figure 1.3).

Figure 1.3 Site view of the Museum of Contemporary Art housed in the distinctive former Maritime Services Board building, clad with sandstone, on Sydney Harbour opposite the Sydney Opera House, Australia, 2015. Image: of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Photograph: Anna Kucera.

The Opera House has functional issues, many of which stem from the controversies and difficulties that arose during its construction – not least the sacking of architect Jørn Utzon before it was completed – but its symbolic importance for the nation as one of the world’s great monuments surpasses these issues. The Sydney Opera House is first and foremost a work of art.

The juxtaposition of the MCA, housed in an old government building, and the iconic Opera House posed a dilemma when the questi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of contributors
• Introduction – Georgia Lindsay
• PART 1: ICONS: Interrogating Spectacle and Design
• PART 2: INVITATIONS: Design with Communities in Mind
• PART 3: EXPERIENCES: Understanding and Reimagining Design Inside
• PART 4: BODIES AND MINDS: Designing for Inclusion
• PART 5: SUSTAINABILITIES: Green Design for New Museums
• Index