© Malcolm Reading Consultants

The Latvian Museum of Contemporary Art Foundation has selected Adjaye Associates to lead the design for a new contemporary art museum in downtown Riga. Selected from a pool of 7 finalists including wHY and Lahdelma & Mahlamäki, the winning design features a strongly animated roof geometry designed to pull soft northern light into each of the gallery spaces.

Adjaye Associates, working with local firm AB3D, envisioned the museum as a social incubator, a welcoming and porous space where people could be brought together through a variety of formal and spontaneous interactions. The jury found that the proposal’s distinctive silhouette would give the museum a strong presence within its context of planned commercial and residential developments, and that is orientation and materiality showed a keen awareness of the vernacular and cultural contexts.

© Malcolm Reading Consultants

“The winning proposal is a beautiful and poetic response to the challenge of the design brief but above all it is specific to Riga,” said Jury Chair David Bickle. “The team thoroughly understood the effect of soft northern light in experiencing and creating art and this insight was the inspiration for their scheme. Through the use of wood and form, the concept design subtly references Latvian architecture, proposing a very animated structure with a lively entrance that will enable the museum to create architectural presence in a new and emerging district. The design is very welcoming and porous – it has the potential to be loved.”

The Latvian Museum of Contemporary Art will be located in a new business and leisure center of Riga known as New Hanza City (NHC), a 24.5 hectare development on the site of the city’s former railway goods station. The project will be joined by the headquarters of ABLV Bank, a hotel, conference center, exclusive apartment district, a pre-school, and urban gardens for recreation. The new museum will cost rough €30 million and will house a unique collection spanning art and visual culture in Latvia and the Baltic Sea region from the 1960s to the present day.

David Adjaye, Principal of Adjaye Associates, said about the project:

“I am honoured to have been selected for this ambitious and much-needed project. This museum will be a beacon that both celebrates Latvia’s incredible artistic legacy and meaningfully links the country to the international art community. The entire process – from collaborating with AB3D to cultivate a design that both understands and enhances its context, to the transparent nature of the competition – has been a pleasure, and stands as a testament to Latvia’s profound commitment to the importance of contemporary art to its cultural life.”

The jury also made special acknowledgements to Henning Larsen Architects and Sauerbruch Hutton, awarding an honorable mention to Sauerbruch Hutton’s entry for its “modest beauty and anti-icon rationale.”

The museum is scheduled to open in November 2021. 

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"Reporting from the Front" Arsenale Exhibition. Image © Laurian Ghinitoiu

To many, it might seem that the goals of Alejandro Aravena‘s 2016 Venice Biennale—as he describes it, “to understand what design tools are needed to subvert the forces that privilege the individual gain over the collective benefit”—are beyond reproach. In spite of these aims, a number of commentators nevertheless have emerged, perhaps led most vocally by Patrik Schumacher, criticizing the biennale. In this article, originally published on The Architecture Foundation’s website as “Holier than thou,” Phineas Harper responds to those criticisms.

The most surprising turn of the 2016 Venice Biennale was not the exhibition itself, but the reaction of its critics. Within hours of kick-off, the internet was filling up with derogatory mutterings of the show being ‘”worthy,” “moralizing,” “holier than thou’,” “earnest,” “’virtue-signaling” and “right on” (which apparently is an insult). The architectural Twitterati, it seemed, were unimpressed.

But what exactly were they hating on? The biennale principally exhibited practices which saw some form of suffering in the world and, through their work, in way or another, were trying to lessen it. How did such a compassionate brief generate such a miserly push-back?

"Reporting from the Front" Arsenale Exhibition. Image © Laurian Ghinitoiu

First let’s deal with the obvious; I get that this wasn’t’ the thrill-a-minute spectacle of some mythical previous years. Venice 2016 hosted some dry pieces of research which, though clearly important in content, failed to leap from the gallery walls. It is hard for any exhibit to hold its own in an environment as overwhelming as Venice, more so in the blur of lunches and Prosecco that is the vernissage. The many vast exhibition spaces favor bold one-liner gestures and with viewers obliged to rush through galleries, each crammed with ideas, in limited time, nuance suffocates in the volume of it all. Where complexity is retained in reams of in-depth text or similarly dense exhibits, it comes across as a selfish curatorial move, demanding precious attention like a spoiled child inevitably at the expense of others.

Gabinete de Arquitectura’s “Breaking the Siege” – Winner of the Golden Lion. Image © Laurian Ghinitoiu

Many of this year’’s curators seem to have created exhibitions forgetting the context in which they will be seen, certainly the context in which they will be reviewed. But that is true of every biennale – 2014’’s Arsenale, for example, plodded through a stultifying showcase of Italian cinema and regional research punctuated by impenetrable contemporary dance, yet Rem received rave reviews. My hunch is that, as is common across political discourse, those with high ethical ambitions are judged to unattainable standards. Feminists will be familiar with this –– say you’’re in favor of women’’s rights but then buy a top from a company known for poor manufacturing conditions and you might as well be Philip Green himself. So in 2012 David Chipperfield can put on a warm and fuzzy melange of what his mates have been toying with recently and he gets a B+, but in 2016 Aravena ups the political ante with an attempt at something much more ambitious yet receives a D-.

NLÉ's Makoko Floating School at the 2016 Venice Biennale. Image © Laurian Ghinitoiu

The argument of this year’s detractors seems to boil down to a feeling that architects ought not to try and help poor people. The thrust of it ran: Architecture isn’t as effective a tool to address global inequality as infrastructure, politics or NGO-led development and therefore shouldn’t attempt to. At one end of the spectrum this manifested as a ‘”get back in the kitchen’”-like call for returning to ‘”what architects are good at’,” (which seemingly means cornices and structural gymnastics). From the other end we were told architects could by all means lobby the real keepers of power but that attempts to address suffering through practice itself were “hopeless’.”

UNFINISHED, curated by Iñaqui Carnicero & Carlos Quintáns, the winner of the Golden Lion for a national contribution (Spanish Pavilion). Image © Laurian Ghinitoiu

The first response is intensely conservative but at least consistent.– For its proponents, architecture is about making nice things for paying clients and there it ends. It’’s a view that’s naive, ahistorical and boring but is what it is. The second however is more pernicious. It wraps up a cluster of problematic values in one defeatist sentiment: That the only power we hold as citizens is as small participants in a large democracy. That it is worse to try and fail than to not try. That helping the few is worthless if you cannot help the many.

"OUR AMAZON FRONTLINE," curated by Sandra Barclay and Jean Pierre Crousse (Peruvian Pavilion). Image © Laurian Ghinitoiu

What a grim worldview! The belief that is is right to not act because you are less powerful than another who could is perverse. It is like refusing to care for a sick friend because a nurse would be more qualified. It is also historically ignorant – the story of human progress is not made in sweeping decisions by powerful individuals but by complex social movements whether of the Right, the Left or neither. Political change is won through the actions, arguments and attitudes of thousands of contributing actors who cannot necessarily see the role their part has played. To insist that anybody with even the smallest agency to make the world a better place should sit idly by and wait for a messiah to intervene on their behalf is not just lazy, it is breathtakingly dull.

en : art of nexus, curated by Yoshiyuki Yamana (Japanese Pavilion). Image © Laurian Ghinitoiu

This biennale was not perfect. None are. And frankly I wonder whether Venice can ever be a fit venue for a serious interrogation of issues more profound than the Campari or Aperol conundrum. The vernissage is, at heart, a schmoozey, boozey networking knees-up in which the architectural great and good cheek-kiss their way down Via Garibaldi occasionally glancing in a pavilion. Arevena knew this all too well when he set out to give the festival some bite. Rather than opt for crowd-pleasing spectacle he forged ahead with a more weighty brief and, with half the time of his predecessor, has galvanized a compelling response. It isn’t a jaw-dropping one-liner, but it is the first biennale I intend to return to for a closer look.

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© Peter Jurkovič

• Architects: JRKVC
• Location: 930 31 Vojka nad Dunajom, Slovakia
• Architect In Charge: Peter Jurkovič
• Area: 65.0 sqm
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Peter Jurkovič

From the architect. During the design process of the lake house I focused on finding the essence of a holiday home—a complement to family life. The house serves as a refuge for a family of five living in the capital—an opportunity to spend free time with family and friends in the countryside.

© Peter Jurkovič

© Peter Jurkovič

Single-storey bungalow is organized around a central living area with a fireplace. Secondary functions are shifted sideways, their volume wraps around the living room. Thanks to folding doors living room opens to the south terrace.

Diagram

Section

There is an asymmetrically positioned hipped roof. Over the south terrace it creates a valuable space protected against sun and rain. Inside the roof serves as an additional space to accommodate additional guests or a hideout for kids.

© Peter Jurkovič

© Peter Jurkovič

Outside the cabin is almost monochrome, just natural wood and white painted cladding. No details. All attention is paid to the essential part of the house, which is inside. There we find the beauty, colors and textures.

© Peter Jurkovič

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Redsquare Productions has produced a short film on architect Shigeru Ban’s design for the Aspen Art Museum (AAM) in Aspen, Colorado. The film explores the museum’s architectural design and built environment through the utilization of time-lapse and motion sequences, highlighting Ban’s vision for the space.

The design invites “those outside to engage with the building’s interior, and provides those inside the opportunity to see their exterior surroundings,” writes Shigeru Ban Architects in their project description. In this sense, the museum becomes a site-specific sequence that incorporates the surrounding mountains and overall beauty of nature into the inside of the building.

Learn more by watching the video, above.

News via Redsquare Productions.

Aspen Art Museum / Shigeru Ban Architects
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