Daring Contemporary Addition to Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum
The grand rooms, majestic staircase and natural lighting of the initial building of the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum created in 1895 were retained in an “updated” modern version of the landmark. Benthem Crouwel Architects envisioned a bold addition for the famous contemporary art museum, situated next to the Van Gogh Museum and the Concertgebouw. The massive white volume provides more space for exhibitions and its interior design is said to blend in with the overall inner appearance of the main building.
The architects describe some of the features of the contemporary Stedelijk museum of art in Amsterdam: “From the entrance, visitors can familiarize themselves with the different routes that are possible through the building. The routing can be controlled by the programming, but is not mandatory in one direction. Thus it is possible to walk directly into the old building to follow the various circuits. The monumental staircase remained and continues to have an important function in the routing.” Amsterdam enthusiasts worldwide, how would you comment on this new architecture addition to the city’s landscape?
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5 CommentsSculpting Irreverence: Giant Dog Marking Its Territory on Modern Art Museum
The Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) in Newport Beach, California recently got a new and …irreverent pet. The 28-foot-tall Labrador marking its territory is entitled “Bad Dog” and was built by Richard Jackson as part of his exhibition Richard Jackson: Ain’t Painting a Pain- and since he created something that urinates on the museum of art, we can only guess it is. In case some of you are interested in the technical details, the outdoor installation was achieved (according to My Modern Met) by using 52 digitally cut pieces of fiber glass and composite materials that were assembled on-site.
But this is not all, as the mechanized sculpture can also squirt streams of yellow paint- you know, just to add a further sense of reality to the scene. While doing the research for this post, I ran into reviews that ranged from “interesting” and “daring”to “weird” or “awkward”. What I personally find interesting is how no one has the courage to simply say “crap”. After all, the project is a close literal interpretation of it. Looking forward to your comments on this one. 
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5 CommentsArchitecture Museum at the Edge of the Edge
Set to open in June of 2013 in the rising city of Nanjing (pop. 6.5 million) in China, the Sifang Art Museum will be a 30,000-square-foot space devoted to contemporary design and architecture. Designed by Steven Holl, the museum is part of the Contemporary International Practical Exhibition of Architecture, a privately financed project that will also include a convention center and 20 villas each with a unique design by architects like Ai Weiwei and David Adjaye. The new identity of the museum has been designed by Singapore-based Foreign Policy Design Group.
Set within the gentle terrain of Laoshan in Nanjing, the architecture of Sifang Art Museum is a well-constructed mix of harsh angularity with an elegant appeal whereby the asymmetrical structure hovers in space. Every view angle yielding a different trapezoidal perspective; the collateral system adopts the trapezoidal form. The Chinese saying — Strength within Gentleness — is inspired by bamboo — the material and form used for landscaping and parts of the structure. This underpins the brand identity, describing the gentle landscape where in old China, scholars and artists took recluse to master their craft or refine their thinking. The demure that also balances the masculinity of the architecture. White, is also a canvas a museum would function as.
— Foreign Policy Design Group description
I’m going to guess that the previous logo was designed when the overall project was first conceived and before any architectural renderings were done, because that is one crazy-angry logo. As usual, Foreign Policy Design Group’s work taps into the overall essence of a subject to create an edgy (almost literally) and sophisticated logo and identity system that demands its own attention. The thin, monospace characters (in both languages), loosely spaced, stacked, and colored in only stark black pay homage to the architecture of the museum without resorting to a typical solution of museums of using the silhouette of its building. The approach is further enhanced in the stationery, where each item has one angled edge, reminiscent of either the central staircase or any of the archways in the museum. Between the museum itself and the identity, there is no reaction other than I want to go to there.
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Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam Officially Opened by Queen Beatrix on September 22
Benthem Crouwel Architects have completed the new extension to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. According to the official press release we were sent, the new levitated superstructure contains
“With this reopening the Stedelijk Museum repositions itself as one of the leading arts institutes. It puts Amsterdam in the spotlight as center of artistic renewal and brings new life to the Museum Square, one of the most important cultural landscapes in the world”, stated Ann Goldstein, Director of the Stedelijk Museum. The museum maintains a collection of modern contemporary art and design of 90,000 objects dating from the seventies of the nineteenth century to the present. The historic part of the museum houses the permanent collection, including art from the oeuvre of Karel Appel, Marc Chagall, Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol. In addition, the museum offers a permanent design presentation including industrial design, graphic design and applied art. The new building offers temporary exhibitions. As of 23 September, the museum will be open to the public. [Information provided by Arup Europe Press Office]
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Leave a commentFollow-up: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
In May we reported on the redesign of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam identity by Mevis & Van Deursen that I described with zingers like “To call it a Type 101 exercise would be advanced” and placing its “concept and execution at the lowest end of the scale.” The comments raged on 200-plus strong and many came to the logo’s defense. I admit that it was one of the few times where I really felt that I got my impression and review wrong. That I was being obtuse. But every time I look at that logo I still see nothing that makes me want to like it on its own — now there is a little more graphic context to the logo thanks to a video posted by the Stedelijk, and shown below (or after the jump) where we see more of the application and hear from its designers.
There are glimmers of something interesting going on in all those applications shown. I still don’t get that tingly sensation in my spider senses that I get with work that I actually like but the larger visual language supports the logo and extends its appearance. Yet, there remains something very aseptic and dry and, well, just plain boring about it that may make me sound like a logo curmudgeon. But I’m fine with that. I trust my instinct and I still wish the whole thing had a little more finesse.
Thanks to Paul Wagner for the tip.
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Perot Museum Hoists Brackets
Established in 2006 in Dallas, TX, the Museum of Nature & Science is the sum of The Dallas Museum of Natural History, The Science Place, and the Dallas Children’s Museum that came together that year. In January of 2013, the museum will be relocated to a new building and be renamed as the Perot Museum of Nature and Science. The new identity, inspired by Morphosis Architects’ cube-shaped building, was designed by Pentagram partners DJ Stout and Michael Bierut.
Morphosis rendering. Source.
Brackets overlaid on an elevation drawing of the museum.
“While the globe within the brackets will be the Museum’s institutional logo mark, the new logo is actually a rarely-been-seen-before dynamic logo,” said Hook while using audio-visual examples to illustrate the concept. “The Perot Museum will have the flexibility to switch out the content within the brackets and fill it with innumerable images, reflecting a multitude of science topics and an array of Museum programs, services and collections.”
—Press release
The previous identity wasn’t terribly memorable and suffered some rather uncomfortable kerning, but this is less a redesign and more of a new branding exercise for an entirely new museum and organization. It is hard to find the new identity to be a “rarely-been-seen-before dynamic logo,” especially on the museum landscape (consider Portland Art Museum and Asia to name a couple). Conceptually, this mark makes a lot of sense, but in practice it feels less inspired by the contemporary architecture of Thom Mayne and more by Kit Hinrich’s (of whom I’m a great admirer) design direction for @issue — there is beauty in it but the aesthetic achieved through the use of Caslon and the various graphic elements feels dated. There are some promising examples within the collateral created but unfortunately the primary lock-up feels the most unresolved in visual weight and composition. This identity’s success or failure will be seen as it is rolled out across many contexts of use.
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The Oatmeal does it: $850,000 raised for a Tesla Museum
The Oatmeal’s campaign to raise cash helping Tesla Science Center purchase Wardenclyffe has hit its $850,000 target. The property, formerly the home of the scientist’s project to create wireless electricity can now be purchased with a matching grant from New York state. The charity is planning to build a museum on its original foundations, in a fitting tribute to the “Greatest Geek who ever lived.”
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Science
The Oatmeal does it: $850,000 raised for a Tesla Museum originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Aug 2012 10:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Stedelijk Museum Spells Out the Obvious
Established in 1895, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (“Municipal Museum Amsterdam”) is a museum for classic modern art, contemporary art, and design in Amsterdam. Currently closed, until September of this year, for a major renovation and expansion by Mels Crouwel of Benthem Crouwel Architects that will adapt the 117-year-old building with a new structure, the Stedelijk will be able to showcase its permanent collection that includes works by Vincent van Gogh, Wassily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, and Jackson Pollock, among others. In late April the museum announced a new logo, designed by the website-less Mevis & Van Deursen, and was immediately met with discontent, gathering more than 300 comments in this Facebook post. Not much other information has been released.
You can certainly see why there has been outrage. The new logo is, well, outrageous. And not in a riotous-oh-my-god-that’s-amazing way but more of a really? kind of way. The concept and execution are at the lowest end of the scale: An “S” made out of the institution’s name set in the most basic sans serif anyone can find. To call it a Type 101 exercise would be advanced. But the main problem isn’t the logo itself, at least not for graphic designers, as the logo comes from one of the more reputable Dutch design duos in the history of our profession, who have generated a smart and visually powerful body of work — for lack of a website here is an image search — with that academic-ey Dutch touch that can be all the rage. So the question is: Do we not get it? Are we too distracted by nice fonts and colors and pleasant things that we are the dumb ones who do not see the genius in this? I couldn’t care less about the answer, I just know what I see, and what I see is a logo with bad rhythm, poor spacing, confusing readability, and no aesthetic joy. Perhaps, as the screen captures below show, there is more to this logo that is yet to be revealed but if all we will be getting are letters stacked in rather obvious ways we shouldn’t hold our breath.
If you are not a Dutch speaker and are wondering, as I was, about why the “I” and “J” are the only letters together in the same line, it is because they are a ligature.
Linda Van Deursen explains the logo in this video. Screen captures above and below from the video.
Thanks to Mark Holtmann for first tip.
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Moscow Design Museum on the Grid
Set to open its first exhibition this year, the Moscow Design Museum is “an international exhibition and education platform and the first, the only and the unique design museum in Russia. It is a space where the general public will be able to view the best examples of international and Russian design.” Founded by Alexandra Sankova, Nadezhda Bakuradze, Stepan Lukyanov, and Valery Patkonen — four independent creatives — the museum will have a home base in Moscow’s Artplay culture center but it is mainly imagined as a nomadic, pop-up museum. Its identity has been designed by Amsterdam-based Lava, who also share a partner role in the museum, advising on content and vision.
Logo construction and variations.
Inspired by old Russian glass patterns, like these, the icons for the logo are generated on a hard-angled grid that can render dozens of interesting shapes, resulting in a flexible logo with many variations but a very distinct DNA across all of them. The icon sits big and monolithic next to a simple and very serious, condensed, rounded sans serif — a contrast that works very well.
With the wordmark working on its own as well, the icons become an attention-demanding pattern that when used sparingly as in some of the applications shown below is quite beautiful and contemporary but when let loose as in the museum’s website it can become annoyingly distracting to the point of queasiness. Overall, the identity is energetic and unique, avoiding all possible Russian constructivism clichés that Lava even admits, in this interview with Fontanel, they explored and were duly rejected.
Thanks to Thomas Fontanel for the tip.
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Asian Art Museum Turned on its Head
First opened in 1966 as a wing of the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, the Asian Art Museum, now in its own building, is currently one of the largest museums in the Western world devoted exclusively to Asian Art, housing a collection of over 17,000 artworks. It was also one of the most financially troubled museums in the Western world devoted exclusively to Asian Art with a $120 million debt, which was recently announced would be solved, setting the museum up for a much needed reinvention: “Our new brand,” explains Jay Xu, Director of the Asian Art Museum “promises to awaken the past and inspire the next. It means we’ll unlock the past for visitors and bring it to life by sparking connections. We’ll also be a catalyst for new art, new creativity and new thinking.” To help turn things around, literally, the Asian Art Museum worked with Wolff Olins to design its new identity.
International brand consultancy Wolff Olins helped to redefine the brand and designed a new logo to directly reflect the museum’s bold vision and new perspective. Its graphic, upside down A mark, accompanied by the word “Asian,” also communicates the museum’s desire to engage all: in mathematics, an upside down A denotes “for all.”
— Press Release
David Perry of David Perry and Associates, the PR firm for the museum, on why we should be excited about the new look.
The old logo was a little painful to watch, but it had good intentions and it sort of exuded Asian-ness with the red color and wispy type; it had an interesting play with the Asia/n structure, but mostly it was just a little weird. The new one, in contrast, exudes not a single bit of Asian-ness. On the contrary, it could probably be a logo for anything but an Asian museum and that seems to help the point the Asian Art Museum is trying to make, that they are not just a warehouse of old Asian clichés but a new kind of platform for Asian art and culture, both old and new. Obviously the biggest statement of the logo is the upside down “A”. The press release mentions that in mathematics the inverted “A” represents “for all” and I wonder how many people will know that — I didn’t, but I also use a calculator to sum two plus two sometimes. When I first saw the logo I tried to extract the meaning of the inverted “A” but other than a slightly corny “Think Different” I came up empty. It’s a bold move, and it has the advantage that there are no other upside down logos out there, so it certainly stands out.
Like any logo thick enough to hold imagery, this one holds artifacts from the collection. It looks good, but it’s far from new. Good thing the holding shape is upside down to give the trick a new spin. I do like the subtle gradient that gives the logo some dimension.
The rest of the materials are decent and support the direction of the logo. I like how the logo can be used big or small in different applications, showing a bit of versatility that, if lacking, would have made for a more stale range of applications. Overall, as a way of saying “this ain’t your ancestors Asian Art Museum” this identity certainly achieves its goal.
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