A “catastrophic” fire has caused serious damage to the architecture faculty at Delft University in the Netherlands. Although no-one was injured in the blaze, much of the 14-storey building has been completely destroyed. Watch the building collapse on YouTube:
“The faculty building caught alight, then spread to the library and the historic chair collection - which includes Rietveld’s Red and Blue chair”, Tony Fretton, a visiting professor at the department, said. He added that first editions of books by Koolhaas and MVRDV are now feared lost.
Gerrit Rietveld. (Dutch, 1888-1964). Red Blue Chair. c. 1923. Painted wood, 34 1/8 x 26 x 33″ (86.7 x 66 x 83.8 cm), seat h. 13″ (33 cm). (Collection of Museum of Modern Art, New York)
Robert Rauschenberg, White Painting, 1951. House paint on canvas, 72 x 72 in, four panels.
Robert Rauschenberg, the irrepressibly prolific American artist who time and again reshaped art in the 20th century, died Monday night.
“A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked.”
The Piazza Augusto Imperatore in Rome and its modern neighbor, the Ara Pacis Museum, at center, designed by Richard Meier. (Photo: Chris Warde-Jones for The New York Times)
The International Herald Tribune has a remarkable story on Rome’s new mayor who recently announced his intention to tear down a museum designed by U.S. architect Richard Meier. He was referring to the so-called Ara Pacis museum that was built to house the Ara Pacis, a 2,000-year-old Roman altar, and opened its doors in the ancient centre of the Italian capital in 2006. Consisting of a glass, marble and steel rectangular shaped structure, the museum was praised by many as a welcome addition to Rome’s more traditional architecture.
But at a news conference, as he outlined his plans for Rome, mayor Gianni Alemanno threatened that: “Meier’s building is a construction to be scrapped”. Alemanno, who last week became the first right-wing politician elected Rome mayor since Mussolini’s time, is among those critics who thought the classical Ara Pacis should never have been housed in such a modern structure.
And he’s is in good company. around the time of the opening in 2006, architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff of The New York Times wrote an almost hostile review of the building and its architect:
Mr. Meier’s building is a contemporary expression of what can happen when an architect fetishizes his own style out of a sense of self-aggrandizement. Absurdly overscale, it seems indifferent to the naked beauty of the dense and richly textured city around it.
And he even went as far as comparing Meier to Mussolini:
” While Mussolini’s architects can be faulted for trying to reshape the city’s history for their own propaganda aims — and to satisfy the egomaniacal drive of a despot — the museum reminds us that vanity is not unique to generals or politicians.”
Next year it will be exactly 100 years ago that Futurist leader Marinetti called for the destruction of the past as entombed in museums, and one century later his intellectual heirs in Italy might bring his words into action..
2 Columbus Circle (on the right), day view (Photo: New York Times)
The 1964 Gallery of Modern Art at 2 Columbus Circle is being transformed into a new space for the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD). Almost everything about the building has changed, but the original “lollipop” columns persist. The New York Times has put an interactive feature online, providing an animated overview of the building’s redesign. Moreover, on the MAD-website you can watch a video of the construction works.
The New York Times is very positive about Renzo Piano’s computer renderings for the future downtown annex of the Whitney Museum: “The bold form expresses a level of experimental courage that he hasn’t shown in years. This is a building that could revive the Whitney, and inject welcome creative energy into the city’s cultural life.”
The architect seems to be very busy these days. After the opening of the LACMA earlier this year and the expected completion of the California Academy of Sciences this fall, the Witney Museum is only one of many large museum projects by the Italian maestro. On Tate Modern’s website you can hear and watch him talk about another highlight in his carreer, the 52-storey glass skyscraper housing the new headquarters of The New York Times.
This fall, after eight years and almost half a billion dollars, architect Renzo Piano will complete the greenest museum ever built—the new California Academy of Sciences, in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park—housing its aquarium, planetarium, and natural-history museum under a two-and-a-half-acre “living roof.”
Piano’s museum has made extensive use of technology in the service of the institution’s green mandate and promises to set a new standard for ‘green museums’. Vanity Fair’s Matt Tyrnauer writes about its genesis.
The Iraqi National Museum has reclaimed 701 artefacts that were stolen during looting in the aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. The news was covered by media from around the world:
Tel Aviv’s new Bauhaus Museum is located in the White City, a collection of 1930s-era International Style buildings designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2003.
Tel Aviv’s “White City,” an unparalleled collection of 4,000 International Style buildings, now has a Bauhaus Museum to display Bauhaus-designed furnishings and related objects. The museum is appropriately located, in an International Style building. The first exhibition, which opened April 25, includes original furniture, graphics, lamps, and glass and ceramic ware, by Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, Christian Bell, Wilhelm Wagenfeld, and others.
It was because of the “White City” that Tel Aviv was added to the list of 56 historical cities in the world in 2003, and became one of the few modern cities to be declared a world heritage site by UNESCO. The maverick architects and designers of the city could not have imagined that their application of the revolutionary Bauhaus style of architecture would eventually make Tel Aviv the largest open-air Bauhaus museum in the world.
It appears that the Bauhaus Museum in Tel Aviv has no website of its own, but the City of Tel Aviv-Jaffa maintains a website with a lot of good information and photos. Moreover, there is currently an exhibition on view about the White City, at the Architekturzentrum Wien (Austria). Read more about the museum on the website of Architectural Record.
The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam has just released its collection widget 3.0. Web Man Peter Gorgels alerted me of their new application, and we are more than happy to show you the fully functional Rijkswidget 3.0.
It is an interesting and clever feature that shows a daily piece of the vast collection of the Rijksmuseum. The widget can be embedded in blogs, Hyves, Facebook and MySpace. It is elegantly designed, and can be blown up; however it would have been nice if you could flip endlessly through the collections, instead of having to wait for tomorrow. Maybe an idea for 4.0?
Update:
This is actually the small version, to be placed in sidebars. This is what we will do for a month, to see how it works. Let us know what you think of this initiative of our friends at the Rijksmuseum.
Here is a blatant quote from Mike Ellis‘ electronicmuseum.org.uk, but since he has such a simple and straightforward conclusion of MW2008 I wanted to copy it entirely.
Ellis just spent 7 years working as Head of Web for the National Museum of Science and Industry, UK, which comprises the Science Museum in London, Media Museum in Bradford and Railway Museum in York. He now calls himself a «Solutions Architect», working for the Professional Services Group at Eduserv.
Please visit his site, he is an authority on many things, and might even come from the future.
This is Mike’s «direction of travel gut feel for what actually went on during the week:
We’re doing some very cool stuff using some great new approaches and technologies.
We’re starting to see the benefits of open access to our content, both in terms of Creative Commons and programmatic access via API’s or syndication.
We’re - at last - worrying less and doing more.
We’re beginning to see the benefits of community, not just the coolness.
Finally: we’re up for collaborating and sharing in more open and positive ways than ever before.»
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Posted by Michiel van Iersel
