..SNØHETTA!..
SFMOMA SELECTS SNØHETTA TO WORK WITH MUSEUM ON DESIGN OF EXPANSION
Truly thrilling news. Snøhetta will collaborate with SFMOMA to design our expansion. Take a look at what else they’ve built, or are building, and just think what we might be bringing home to the bay. Absolutely stunning:
The National Opera and Ballet, Oslo:
Snøhetta, National Opera and Ballet, Oslo, 2007; photo: Jens Passoth; © Snøhetta
Snøhetta, National Opera and Ballet, Oslo, 2007; photo: Jens Passoth; © Snøhetta
Hamar Town Hall, Hamar, Norway:
Snøhetta, Hamar Town Hall, Hamar, Norway, 2000; photo: Damian Heinisch; © Snøhetta
The September 11 Memorial Museum at the World Trade Center site:
Snøhetta, National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion at the World Trade Center site, New York (rendering), due to be completed in 2011; image: Squared Design Lab, courtesy Snøhetta; © Snøhetta
Snøhetta, National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion at the World Trade Center site, New York (rendering), due to be completed in 2011; image: Squared Design Lab, courtesy Snøhetta; © Snøhetta
The Bibiliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria, Egypt:
Snøhetta, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria, Egypt, 2001; photo: James Willis; © Snøhetta
Snøhetta, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria, Egypt, 2001; photo: James Willis; © Snøhetta
Snøhetta, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt, 2000; photo: Gerald Zugmann; © Snøhetta
The Lillehammer Art Museum, Norway:
Snøhetta, Lillehammer Art Museum, Norway, 1994; photo: Jiri Havran; © Snøhetta
These are the people:
Snøhetta firm portrait; photo: Snøhetta; © Snøhetta
And these are the other people, the principals (dining at a neighborhood joint near you, sometime soon, wouldn’t you think?):
Snøhetta principals (R-L) Craig Dykers and Kjetil Thorsen; photo: courtesy Snøhetta; © Snøhetta
Comments (5)
Hwantto say thank you for this interesting article! =) Peace, Joy.
I don’t think this was actually a competition, was it ?
Wasn’t it a short list generated from a committtee ?
@Daniel:
While I can appreciate that support of a local community is important, your list is missing a few prominent names including the most important one: Ghery (and the building that started last decades museum craze). If all institutions go local or national, we as American architects lose a great deal of opportunity as well. The Louvre, Bilbao, National Gallery in London, Ara Pacis Museum Rome just to name a tiny fraction of the major work done in world capitals by American architects. To have buildings by HdM, Piano and soon Snohetta raise the bar for us practicing here.
Snohetta came to prominence as a young team entering an international design competition against the big names of the day. I don’t see anything stopping our colleagues from doing the same today.
The SFMOMA claims “We are a nonprofit organization of 353 individuals dedicated to the idea that art and museums can transform lives. By embracing the challenge of the new and unexpected, we hope to encourage fresh ways of seeing, thinking, and engaging with the world.”
Why is it then that SFMOMA, along with other U.S. art museums lately, have formed a building committee, chosen from a very short list of “name” architects and then picked the most buzz worthy and expensive architectural firms ?
With so much architectural talent and excellence going begging in the United States,and in particular California and given the unemployment rate among U.S. architects hovering at between 10% to 40% in the U.S. (depending on the city) why is it necessary to hire a firm from Norway?
Isn’t hiring an architect when they have several museum commissions a bit late in the game and at the top of the market? If every city has their Adjaye/Zumthor/Koolhaas/Snøhetta/Piano building won’t it be difficult to claim uniqueness from any other institution?
A cultural consumer is already hard pressed to differentiate one museum from another given how many are done by a mere handful of well know architects. From a marketing standpoint this is unsustainable. From an architectural standpoint it is a tragedy.
This building project, if it proceeds as planned, will stand as a monument to the current media obsessed age which is ignoring a generation of new, qualified, diverse, and excellent, U.S. architects. Lost is support and nurture of an organic and vital architectural scene in the long term in the attempt to generate buzz in the short term.
One looks to the boards of any city’s art institutions to be the patrons of all the creative arts each time they have the opportunity. It is dismaying that the boards of art institutions in U.S. cities do not support their own architects and include them in the creation of cultural buildings.
“1. There is no architecture without action, no architecture without events, no architecture without program. 2. By extension, there is no architecture without violence.”–Bernard Tschumi.
I hope there are water slides in the ‘new’ museum. I hope there are secret passages to weird rooms in the ‘new’ museum. I hope there is a section deep underground, like a grotto or a bunker, where the sex lives of the artists in the ‘new’ SFMOMA are revealed.