Architecture & Web Art

Archive for the ‘Museums – Pavillions’ Category

The Water Cube

MVRDV‘s latest design, called The Water Cube, is a pavilion for the World Expo 2012 in Yeosu, Korea. The theme of the Expo is “The Living Ocean and Coast”.

EXPO-WONDERS

There are few things that men can call fantastic, or wonder, but this is between those. The world expo events are actual wonders. In the literal meaning. They show man kinds fantasies. They allow for this great opportunity to express excitement and admiration. The past has given a series of true world wonders that express that rare combination of entertainment and education, of research and achievement, like the Eifel Tower in Paris, the Sphere at the NY expo, the Montreal Habitat building, Buckminsterfullers dome in Montreal. What to add to this history? Can the chosen theme lead to a new powerful object? Will it create a change in our way of living and thinking?

Chinese jade culture through its 8,000-year history will take center stage at the Taiwan-based Aurora Group’s Expo 2010 Pavilion. Jade symbolizes the national character such as gentleness, perseverance and the pursuit of peace, and the Expo will provide a platform to help promote such hopes, Tan Baijuan, deputy director of the pavilion, said yesterday while unveiling the design.

The pavilion will feature rare exhibits such as a piece of 2.5-ton jade and Beijing Olympic medals made of fine jade from the Kunlun Mountains in Northwest China’s Qinghai Province.

The theatre inside the pavilion will show Chinese myths and about 30 rare jade relics from the Aurora Museum will also be exhibited. The biggest challenge now is to squeeze the soul of jade’s history spanning thousands of years into a short journey of 20 minutes, said Tan. More images after the break.

These images show the futuristic building plans for the Museum of Middle East Modern Art to be located in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The project is being lead by UN Studio, an architecture company in the Netherlands. Like many other projects in Dubai, this cultural building is defining new modern design ideas in a city that is investing in its future. The museum will be located in Culture Village near the banks of Dubai Creek (Khor Dubai). With the blossoming wealth of the region one can only hope that its collection will rival that of other modern art museums around the world. Via.

Thom Mayne has revealed his design for the Perot Museum of Nature and Science at Victory Park, Dallas. Mayne describes the project as a “living educational tool featuring architecture inspired by nature and science”. The new facility will provide 180,000 sq ft of display and archive space on a 4.7 acre site in the north of downtown Dallas.

Museums, armatures for collective societal experience and cultural expression, present new ways of interpreting the world. They contain knowledge, preserve information and transmit ideas; they stimulate curiousity, raise awareness and create opportunities for exchange. As instruments of education and social change, museums have the potential to shape our under- standing of ourselves and the world in which we live.

As our global environment faces ever more critical challenges, a broader understanding of the interdependence of natural systems is becoming more essential to our survival and evolution. Museums dedicated to nature and science play a key role in expanding our understanding of these complex systems.