Rafael Viñoly Architects has designed the new East Wing at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA), Ohio, which opened to the public on June 27, 2009. Its completion marks the opening of the first of three planned wings.


Viñoly’s design for the new East Wing forms part of an impressive seven year expansion and renovation project. The 139,200 square foot East Wing connects CMA’s original 1916 Beaux-Arts building and the 1971 addition by Marcel Breuer, creating spectacular new spaces for the presentation and conservation of one of the leading encyclopaedic art collections in the United States.

Photographs courtesy of Brad Feinknopf

Cities get identified by their landmarks. The centre of Davenport, suffers from many of the problems endemic to a number of American cities. Over the years the area has witnessed the departure of much of its residential and business community, leaving downtown Davenport with little of the vibrancy normally associated with urban life.

The implementation of this new home for the Figge Art Museum, formerly the Davenport Museum of Art, in downtown Davenport, has been a major catalyst in the urban revitalization of a historic city, which is located on the banks of the Mississippi River on Iowa’s eastern border and is the largest of the Quad Cities, that also comprises Bettendorf, Iowa, and Rock Island and Moline, Illinois.

All photographs © This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

 




The Baltic Sea Comes To Life at Ozeaneum, as Behnisch Architekten Completes the Oceanographic Museum.

The weather-beaten city of Stralsund on the Baltic Sea is humming with excitement, thanks to the addition of Ozeaneum, the new German Oceanographic Museum designed by Behnisch Architekten. The well-known firm works out of offices in Stuttgart, Germany, as well as both Los Angeles and Boston in the U.S.

This aquarium is built right along the city’s harbor promenade surrounded by historic warehouses. It’s an open structure flooded from all sides by people and light, similar to the way stones in the sea near the water’s edge are flooded by the surrounding water.

With its upper level hovering dramatically over the water, the Institute of Contemporary Art offers its visitors, a rich and dynamic visual experience. The building deals with the challenging concept of offering both interactive public areas and intimate private spaces within a single unified entity.

As explained by Elizabeth Diller: “The design of the ICA negotiates between two competing objectives: to perform as a dynamic civic building filled with public and social activities, and as a contemplative space providing individual visitors with intimate experiences with contemporary art.  The "public" building is built from the ground up; the "intimate" building, from the sky down ».

Located on the campus of Johnson County Community College, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art  is home to a significant collection of contemporary artists including: Dana Schutz, Kehinde Wiley, Uta Barth, Kerry James Marshall and Do-Ho Suh. It has brought an exciting new presence to the campus and serves as the starting point of a campus-wide art installation program.

Kyu Sung Woo Architects has received the Honor Award at the AIA Central States Design Excellence Awards for their design.

Located in the scenic regions of Southern Austria, the project is built high up in the landscape. Museum Liaunig has a remarkable architecture that protrudes out on two sides over a steep-sided landscape. The cut through the hill marks a punctual intervention in nature.