Inspirational participatory public installations by Candy Chang

Photo by Amy Halverson on Flickr.

TED Global was way more than stunning talks. In fact, maybe the best thing was the unique blend of inspirational people I met. One of them, artist Candy Chang, makes public installations I’m sure many of you will appreciate.

Her business card says Candy likes to make cities more comfortable for people. Many of her projects close the gap between the public and the often almost intangible stuff that surrounds them. Her work connects people and asks for their contribution.

Candy’s a TED Senior Fellow which means there’s hundreds of thousands of people out there who think she rocks. And one: me. Here’re just three of her projects:

Looking for Love Again

What to do with abandoned buildings? There’re hundreds of them in every city (especially once you start looking for them). For one specific building, the Polaris Building in Fairbanks, people were asked just that question. Plus, they were asked to tell their stories about the building. There’s also a website attached that asks for contributions in a refreshingly simple way. The number of contributions is overwhelming and I’m sure this will influence the future of the building.

Photo by Candy Chang. Read the rest of this entry »

Three possible designs for architecture of the museum of the future

Yesterday we presented the book Sketches for a National History Museum. However, flipping through the book and talking with the young architects involved, I realise it could also be called “Sketches for a Museum in the 21^st century”. Three young European architecture firms came up with three different possibilities for future museum architecture. Here’s how they envision the architecture of the museum of the future.

An enormous hall

An extremely spacious central hall makes me think immediately of Tate Modern. If you think that is cool architecture, however, 51N4E’s proposal might be your dream come true. Their design “Hall of History” consists of a ten-storeys-high wall with exposition spaces, overlooking an enormous hall where flexible expositions of all sizes can be organised. From the “wall” a visitor can look out at what happens in the “hall”, and vice versa.

I love how this design makes it possible to tell larger stories. Imagine the wall being a timeline of art history. From the hall you can get a sense of what influenced who etc. whereas in the spaces in the wall you can see individual art works from a certain period.

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What is good museum architecture?

In a couple of days we’ll present a book with sketches for future museums. The book “Sketches for a National Museum of History” explores possibilities for museum architecture. Kenneth Frampton and Hans Ibelings wrote essays, researchers at the Berlage Institute made design sketches, and three young European architecture firms, 51N4E, Baukuh and Monadnock, submitted plans to encourage thinking about a new museum architecture. I had a chance to look at the book and I must say it’s inspiring and the designs are daring and different from what you’d expect.

Yesterday we launched a small website to encourage thinking about good museum architecture. It focuses on six themes – connect, show, sense, open, move and site – and hopefully will spark some new ideas about good museum architecture. You’re free to add your ideas (don’t let the Dutch scare you, it’s a bilingual website!).

So, what is good museum architecture?

That, I’m afraid, is a question without an answer. Or, with many answers. The book explores how architecture can deal with certain characteristics of museums. For instance, how architecture influences the presentation of objects (“show”). The two examples below are from the book and show how a church and a museum built on top of a chapel show their objects. I like them both, but believe they’re very different in their architectonic approach.

Pastor van Ars Church (design Aldo van Eyck, photo m.by) and Kolumba (design Peter Zumthor, photo seier+seier).

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