october-2011

PLAYING TO THE GALLERY
Snaking, shimmering, sensational – take a tour round the
museums that are worth visiting for their architecture alone
In 1997, the Guggenheim
Foundation opened a new
exhibition space for modern
art in a spectacular building
designed by American architect
Frank Gehry. The new museum
was in Bilbao in northern Spain,
a rundown port town with failing
local industry. The eff ect was
startling. Visitors fl ocking to see
Gehry’s stunning building
bought lunches, ate dinners,
stayed in hotel rooms, visited
shops, and fi nally revitalised the
local economy. Since then, it’s
been impossible to open a
museum without politicians,
marketing strategists and
museum staff invoking the
“Bilbao eff ect” – striking
architecture that guarantees
high visitor numbers. As more
cities around the world twigged
that culture equals tourist bucks,
a host of attractions, as famous
for their architecture as their
exhibitions, have sprung up.
In August 2009, Rome’s new
MAXXI art museum was the
focus of a huge amount of
publicity, even before a single
artwork had gone on display. The
museum was designed by
London’s Pritzker prize-winning
sensationalist, Zaha Hadid, so an
extraordinary building was
pretty much guaranteed. Hadid
didn’t disappoint. The museum is
made up of bands of exposed
concrete, and loops around and
over the adjacent buildings, like a
cubist snake in a concrete jungle.
The Bilbao eff ect seems to have
struck again; around 500,000
visitors came to check out
MAXXI in its fi rst year alone.
Another new, albeit smaller
museum has recently been
unveiled in Tel Aviv. The
London-based Israeli designer
Ron Arad built the Design
Museum Holon using pieces of
rusty steel, which serve the dual
function of being both an
aesthetically appealing façade
and providing some muchneeded
shade. Arad claims the
client wanted a building that
would look good on a stamp.
And it would. The steel bands,
which evoke Frank Lloyd
Wright’s Guggenheim Museum
in New York, give the otherwise
innocuous building a high
recognition value, and raises it
above its banal surroundings.
Somewhat off the mainstream
museum trail, the Polish Aviation
M U S E U M S
Die Stahlschleifen des Holon
Musuems in Tel Aviv
Architect Ron Arad’s
swirling bands of steel around
the Design Museum Holon
Museum in Krakow is staging an
exhibition that will appeal to
plane fans. It’s showing its
valuable collection of historic
Polish and German aircraft in a
new building designed by Berlin
architects Pysall Ruge. The
exposed concrete and glass
building is situated in a former
airport complex. The exhibits are
displayed in the old hangars and
on the surrounding land. From
above, the building looks like a
GW—79