MUSEUMS CASE STUDY Heriot Watt University - Dubai
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract
3
Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao – Spain
4
Acropolis Museum, Athens – Greece
10
Louvre, Abu Dhabi – UAE
16
Conclusion
21
Bibliography
22
The following research project seeks to understand different museum designs across the world. The design concept, structure, plans etc. of three museums have been analyzed. After which, an opinion about a good museum design has been proposed.
The project as such does not draw a conclusion but in contrast it traces the various architectural styles used over the years.
ABSTRACT
I hereby acknowledge that the following project is a compilation of my design analysis, and all images are strictly used for research purposes, and all images are subjected to copyright with respect to its original owners.
As a designer, the learning outcome from the following is the exploration of design through its core, understanding the different forms of modern art museums, and the functions of a museum structure.
GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM, BILBAO - SPAIN DESIGN CONCEPT/PROCESS The faรงade of the museum is designed with graceful aesthetic curves which are reminiscent of the ships that used to be everywhere along the docks of Bilbao. The material used to make the faรงade is titanium, which resembles the scales of a fish and shines in sunlight.
Architect – Frank Gehry Location - Basque city of Bilbao in northern Spain Total site area – 32500 square meter Built area – 24000 square meter •Plans for a new museum in Bilbao dated to the late 1980s, when the region had to be redeveloped. In 1991, three architects including Frank O. Gehry were invited to participate in the competition to produce a conceptual design. Frank Gehry
Basque City of Bilbao •The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao was built between October 1993 and October 1997. •The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is a glorious example of one of the most pioneering 20th-century architecture. With 11000 square meters of total built area dedicated to the exhibition space, the Museum is an architectural landmark of bold design. •Overall, the remarkable sculpture-like structure perfectly integrates within Bilbao’s urban pattern and its surrounding area.
Guggenheim Museum Location Map
DESIGN PHILOSOPHY
Gehry’s design was selected due to his use of orthodox materials, inventive forms, and his sensitivity to the urban environment. Gehry used cutting-edge computer-aided design technology to translate his poetic forms into reality. The resulting architecture is sculptural and expressionistic. The museum was designed keeping historical and geographical contexts in mind.
STRUCTURE EXTERIOR The Museum is surrounded by attractive avenues and squares and is in a newly developed area of the city, leaving its industrial past behind. The highest part of the Museum is crowned by a large skylight in the shape of a metal flower covering the Atrium, one of the building’s most characteristic features. The spectacular titanium scales impart an extraordinary lightness and iridescence to the overall structure. Fixing clips make a shallow central dent in each of the thin (0.38mm) tiles, due to which the surface appears rippling and delicate in the changing light.
INTERIOR The Atrium is the heart of the Museum and one of the signature traits of Frank Gehry’s architectural design. It is an ample space flooded with light and covered by a great skylight due to the inclusion of curved volumes and large glass curtain walls in its structural design. The three levels of the building are designed around the Atrium and are connected by means of curved walkways, titanium and glass elevators, and staircases. Some of the 20 galleries are orthogonally shaped and with classical proportions and others with organic, irregular lines. Despite the complexity, the plan is quite simple. The building’s walls and ceilings are load-bearing, containing an internal structure of metal rods that form grids with triangles. In addition, the walls and ceilings have several insulting layers.
THE CONSTRUCTION Due to the mathematical complexity of Gehry’s design, he used an advanced software initially used in the aerospace industry, CATIA, to truly translate his concept to the structure and to help construction. For the outer skin of the building, titanium was chosen after ruling out other materials. The finish of the approximately 33,000 extremely thin titanium sheets provides a rough and organic effect, adding to the material’s color changes depending on weather and light conditions. The other two materials used in the building, limestone and glass, harmonize perfectly, achieving an architectural design with a great visual impact. The Museum is equipped with specially adapted magnetic loop PDA video guides for those with hearing impairments and has wheelchair accessibility.
CLIMATIC CONSIDERATIONS Constructed using titanium, glass and limestone, the seemingly random curves of the exterior are designed to catch the light and react to the sun and the weather. Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Construction Details
ENGINEERING ASPECTS Light is diffused through slashes of glazing in the inclined walls, casting continuously changing shadows throughout the space.
OUTDOOR LANDSCAPE FEATURES Originally the site was an industrial wasteland on the banks of Ria de Bilbao. To further beautify the surroundings, some other artists have also added their touch to the Guggenheim. For example, a simple pool of water emits a mist ‘Sculpture’, a sculpture of a skeletal canopy representing a spider symbolizes a protective embrace, and a fountain structure randomly fires jets of water into the air.
CONCLUSION Guggenheim is a modern art museum. Some people have also said that structure overwhelms function in this museum design and that the Guggenheim is more famous for its architecture than its content. This statement is true to some extent because Frank Gehry’s inspired use of flowing canopies, cliffs, ship shapes, towers and flying fins is irresistible.
ACROPOLIS MUSEUM, ATHENS - GREECE Architect – Bernard Tschumi Architects Total area - 25,000 square meters Exhibition space - over 14,000 square meters Opening date – June 2009 Overall Project Budget - $ 175 million • Acropolis Museum is in the historic Makryianni district, and less than 1,000 feet southeast of the Parthenon. The top-floor Parthenon Gallery offers a 360-degree panoramic view of the Acropolis and modern Athens. • The Acropolis Museum tells the story of life on the Athenian Acropolis and its surroundings by uniting collections formerly dispersed in multiple institutions, including the small Acropolis Museum built in the 19th century.
DESIGN CONCEPT Designed with spare horizontal lines and utmost simplicity, the Museum is deliberately non-monumental, focusing the visitor’s attention on extraordinary works of art. DESIGN PHILOSOPHY The building form arose as a response to the challenges of creating a structure that was worthy of housing the most dramatic sculptures of Greek antiquity. The design was chosen for its simple, clear and beautiful solution that was in harmony with the Museum’s unique exhibits. ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
Acropolis Museum Athens
The design was prepared taking into consideration the position of the Parthenon, the sensitive archaeological excavations, the presence of the contemporary city and its street grid, and the special challenges of the hot climate in Athens and an earthquake region.
INTERIOR •The rich collections exhibited in the museum provide visitors with a comprehensive picture of the human presence on the Acropolis, from pre-historic times through late ancient times. Ruins from the 4th through 7th centuries A.D. have been left intact and protected beneath the building and made visible through the first floor. The museum also includes a 200-seat auditorium. •The base stands over the excavation on more than 100 slender concrete pillars. This level contains the lobby, temporary exhibition spaces, museum store, and support facilities. •The middle floor (which is trapezoidal in plan) is a double-height space that soars to 10 meters, accommodating the galleries from the Archaic to the late Roman period. A mezzanine floor features a bar and restaurant (with a public terrace looking out toward the Acropolis) and multimedia space. •The top is a rectangular, glass-enclosed, skylit Parthenon Gallery, over 7 meters high and with a floor space of over 2,050 square meters. It is shifted 23 degrees from the rest of the building to orient it directly toward the Acropolis. The building’s concrete core, which penetrates upward through all levels, allows natural light to pass down to the Caryatids on the level below. •The sleek, modern museum building houses around 4000 exhibits. Light and airy, the building not only offers mesmerizing views of the Acropolis itself but throughout the building glass panels reveal excavations of the ancient dwellings below. The top floor is a majestic setting for the replicas of the Parthenon Marbles.
Light: The collection primarily consists of works of sculpture, many of which are architectural pieces that originally decorated the monuments of the Acropolis, so the building that exhibits them is a museum of ambient natural light. The use of various types of glass allows light to flood into the top-floor Parthenon Gallery, to filter through skylights into the archaic galleries, and to penetrate the core of the building, gently touching the archeological excavation below the building. The most contemporary glass technology has been used to protect the galleries against excessive heat and light. Circulation: The collection is installed in chronological sequence, from pre-history through the late Roman period, but reaches its high point with the Parthenon Frieze. The visitor’s route is therefore a clear, threedimensional loop. It goes up from the lobby via escalator to the double-height galleries for the Archaic period; upward again by escalator to the Parthenon Gallery; then back down to the Roman Empire galleries and out toward the Acropolis itself.
MATERIALS Throughout the museum, glass, concrete and marble have been used to complement the simplicity of the overall design. Concrete provides the main building structure and acts as a neutral backdrop for the artwork. The concrete walls have circular holes throughout in order to absorb sound. Local marble has been used for the floors; black for circulation routes and light beige in the galleries. The glass faรงade is made of perfectly transparent and purified lowiron glass with an invisible UV coating and printed frit. It filters the light through a silkscreen-shading process. The skylights are made of frosted glass panels. ACCESS The museum has been designed especially for pedestrian visitors. Parking is not available on site, but it is available in the nearby neighborhood. Bus drop-off can also be availed by the visitors. The museum can also be accessed by the Athens Metro. CONCLUSION Architect and lead designer, Bernard Tschumi designed a non-monumental structure deliberately in order to present the unparalleled collection. The simple and defined design invokes the mathematical and conceptual clarity of ancient Greek architecture.
LOUVRE, ABU DHABI - UAE Architect – Jean Nouvel Opening date – 11 November 2017 Location - Saadiyat Island Total built area – 64000 square meters 6000 square meters is devoted to the permanent collection and 2000 square meters is for the temporary exhibitions. Louvre Museum, Abu Dhabi DESIGN CONCEPT Louvre Abu Dhabi is a welcoming world serenely combining light and shadow, reflection and calm. The main idea behind its design is that it belongs to a country, to its history and geography. It also aims to emphasize the fascination created by rare encounters. Designed as a micro city, Louvre Abu Dhabi is an archipelago out at sea.
ACCESS Visitors can arrive by either land or sea. Jean Nouvel
STRUCTURE EXTERIOR The centerpiece of the Louvre Abu Dhabi is the huge silver dome that appears to float above the entire museum. Despite its apparent weightlessness, the dome in fact weighs approximately 7,500 tons (the same as the Eiffel Tower in Paris). Inspired by the cupola, a distinctive feature in Arabic architecture, the dome is a complex, geometric structure forming a tapestry of 7850 stars, repeated at various sizes and angles in eight different layers. As the sun passes above, its light filters through the perforations in the dome to create an exciting effect within the museum, known as the ‘rain of light’. This design is inspired from the palm trees of Abu Dhabi, whose leaves catch the bright sunlight from above to dapple and soften its projection onto the ground. The dome is supported on four piers, which create the floating effect. Each pier is 110 meters apart and hidden within the museum building. The diameter of the dome’s base is 180 meters. Louvre Abu Dhabi is 40 meters above sea level and the dome is 36 meters above ground.
INTERIOR Just like wandering the narrow streets of an Arabian medina, visitors can explore 55 detached buildings. 23 of these buildings are devoted to galleries, which were inspired by the low-lying homes of the local region. The exterior façades overlook both sea and Abu Dhabi skyline encouraging long walks and conversations. Inspired by the ancient falaj system of Arab engineering, a water channel runs through the museum, making the space into a refreshing oasis that encourages strolling along the waterside.
Louvre Abu Dhabi Site
Louvre Abu Dhabi Floor Plan
ENVIRONMENTAL STATUS Apart from aesthetics, the dome of the museum also serves several environmental purposes. It acts as a shading canopy to protect the outdoor plaza and the buildings below from the of the sun. It also offers a comfortable experience for visitors, allowing then to wander between the galleries, exhibitions, children’s museum, auditorium, open plaza and the cafÊ and restaurant. In addition, the shade reduces the energy consumption of each of the covered buildings. The Louvre Abu Dhabi is targeting silver LEED status, and has achieved a 3 Pearl Estidama Design Rating. The museum has a comfortable microclimate with culturally inspired passive-design techniques including a concept based on traditional regional architecture, passive water and energy conservation techniques and highly efficient HVAC systems, lighting and sanitary fittings. Other techniques include the use of solar shading effect of the dome roof and self-shading of buildings, optimized roof perforations to allow daylight without excess solar gain or wind flow and exposed thermal mass such as stone floor and cladding that can benefit from night-time cooling.
MATERIALS The dome of Louvre Abu Dhabi is made up of eight different layers, of which four outer layers are clad in stainless steel and four inner layers are clad in aluminium.
CONCLUSION
After careful analysis of three different museum designs, the ideas were consolidated to produce a concept for a modern art museum in the heart of Dubai. These case studies were performed for the sole purpose of learning how modern art museums function and the unique design concepts incorporated in diverse settings. Every site proposes a different setback for the designer, but such case studies offer encouragement for creativity and imagination to deal with challenges. The main aim for choosing these three museums for research was to include museum designs from different regions and of different artistic styles.
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