a+u 2026:07 Feature:Museum Commons
Content
a+u’s July issue features 12 recent museum projects at a moment when the museum is being reimagined as something more than a building organized around galleries. Some of these newly built museums open toward the street, as in OMA’s expansion of New Museum, which enters into dialogue with its SANAA-designed neighbor – 2 buildings reciprocal in program yet distinct in character that as a pair engage directly with their urban environment. Other projects documented here elevate the museum, freeing the ground for public use. Herzog & de Meuron’s M+ hovers above reclaimed harbor land in Hong Kong as a transparent horizontal platform organized around a central plaza. In Los Angeles, David Geffen Galleries – LACMA by Peter Zumthor and SOM spans Wilshire Boulevard in a single monolithic gesture, stitching a fragmented campus into a continuous horizontal surface. Working within rather than above its site, Ateliers Jean Nouvel preserves a Haussmannian façade of Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain at Palais-Royal in Paris while glazing the side façades to open the interior to the street. Together, the projects presented in this issue suggest a broader shift in the role of the museum to something akin to a commons – a place for gathering as much as an edifice for the display of objects.
Essay:
Bridging Millennia: The Museum and the Contemporary Condition
Michaela Giebelhausen
Essay:
Notes on New Museum
Andrew MacNair
OMA / Shohei Shigematsu
New Museum
Essay:
Designing a Pair, Not an Addition
Shohei Shigematsu
Herzog & de Meuron
Calder Gardens
M+
Ateliers Jean Nouvel
Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain – Palais Royal
MAD Architects
FENIX Museum of Migration
MVRDV
Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen
BIG
Atelier Audemars Piguet Museum
Peter Zumthor and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM)
David Geffen Galleries – LACMA
David Chipperfield Architects
Kunsthaus Zürich Museum Extension
O’Donnell + Tuomey Architects
V&A East Museum
Estudio Herreros
Malba–Puertos
Kéré Architecture
Centre des Cultures et Spiritualités Ewés
Obituary:
Frank Gehry – From Los Angeles to Bilbao
Rafael Moneo