Bøger i Museum Building serien

The Joan Miró Foundation opened in 1975, becoming Barcelona's first public institution to focus entirely on contemporary art. The architect Josep Lluís Sert designed the Foundation's building with clean, airy white shapes of curves and corners and multiple skylights, creating a decidedly Mediterranean-flavored complex arranged around a central patio, with expansive roof terraces above. (Two subsequent expansions to the building were designed by Jaume Freixa, a pupil and longtime colleague of Sert's.) After the first major retrospective of Miró's work occurred in Barcelona in 1968, the artist decided to set up a building to make his work and the work of other contemporary artists permanently accessible to the public. To design the foundation's home, he tapped his old friend Sert, a pioneer in the introduction of modern architecture in Catalonia, who had first met Miró in 1932 and worked with him on the Spanish (Republican) Pavilion at the Paris World Fair in 1937. This volume, one of a series of monographs on new museum architecture, provides a careful look at the design of one of Europe's premier art institutions, and includes an interview with the architects responsible for the recent expansions.

The Institute of Contemporary Art, designed by Diller + Scofidio (now Diller Scofidio + Renfro), was the first new art museum to be built in Boston in a century. Opened in December 2006, the ICA is located on a small parcel of land on Boston Harbor and this is the 25th location for the museum in its 75 year history and its first, permanent, free-standing home. "The ICA's decision to hire Diller + Scofidio reflected our belief in the firm's vision that architecture can shape as well as reflect contemporary experience," stated Jill Medvedow, director of ICA. The architects balanced use of cool and transparent glass with the warmth of wood and the energy of light, as well as their design of spare, flexible spaces for presenting contemporary art, was a revelation for a city and an architectural community. ''Their brilliant and beautiful design of the ICA was a harbinger of change: edgy, bold and breathtaking, transforming the landscape for contemporary art and culture in Boston and for the artists, art and ideas of our time," Medvedow has said.

Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza (born 1933) is one of the most influential architects of the past half-century. His most famous work is perhaps the Serralves Museum in his hometown of Porto, his second museum building, following the Galician Center for Contemporary Art, erected in 1997. Low built and horizontal in axis, its white stucco walls are perforated with occasional openings that yield unexpected views of a surrounding garden. As with most of Siza's buildings, the furniture and fittings were also designed by the architect, including lighting fixtures, handrails, doorknobs and all signage. Building materials include hardwood floors and painted walls in gesso with marble skirting in the exhibition halls and marble floors in the foyers. This volume, published in Poligrafa's innovative "Museum Building" series, reviews the Serralves Museum, a disarmingly intimate space in pronounced contradistinction to much recent museum architecture.