Re-imagining the museum

<p>Twentieth-century museums have become more than displays of art and history. Unlike their nineteenth century origins, museums today are a centre of culture, education and entertainment. Designing a circulation system that connects the transitions between exhibits is like forming a riddle for a visitor to enter, experience, solve and remember. The museum reflects every asset, flaw, scar, crease, emotion, and sole of whom has time to stand and observe. For one to observe, one has to navigate. Seeking the key principles into designing a successful circulation between architecture and visitor will allow a large-scale building to be read effortlessly and seamlessly like a well-written novel. In the late 1980’s a design brief was revealed to the public requesting proposals for a National Museum of New Zealand. 10 years later the doors opened to Te Papa Tongarewa on Wellington’s waterfront. Among the submitted proposals, was a concept design by Ian Athfield and Frank Gehry. Their proposal did not make it past the conceptual stage, thus offering the opportunity to explore its potential interiority and circulation. This thesis engages with the great museums that initiated 21st Century architecture such as the Guggenheim of Bilbao, the Jewish Museum of Berlin and most importantly, investigation into the design of Te Papa Tongarewa to analyse their method of circulation. For these museums both encapsulate the heritage of their location as well as defining future possibilities for museum architecture. This thesis re-imagines the possibilities of the National Museum of New Zealand. This will be investigated through the tools of circulation and the experiential qualities that the architecture initiates as our bodies and the way we move are in continuous dialogue with our architecture. This thesis investigates the importance and functionality of atrium designs, as well as the influence it has on the structures circulatory system. Exploring the potential of an Athfield / Gehry design will inspire an alternate reality to what could have been.</p>

Re-imagining the museum

<p>Twentieth-century museums have become more than displays of art and history. Unlike their nineteenth century origins, museums today are a centre of culture, education and entertainment. Designing a circulation system that connects the transitions between exhibits is like forming a riddle for a visitor to enter, experience, solve and remember. The museum reflects every asset, flaw, scar, crease, emotion, and sole of whom has time to stand and observe. For one to observe, one has to navigate. Seeking the key principles into designing a successful circulation between architecture and visitor will allow a large-scale building to be read effortlessly and seamlessly like a well-written novel. In the late 1980’s a design brief was revealed to the public requesting proposals for a National Museum of New Zealand. 10 years later the doors opened to Te Papa Tongarewa on Wellington’s waterfront. Among the submitted proposals, was a concept design by Ian Athfield and Frank Gehry. Their proposal did not make it past the conceptual stage, thus offering the opportunity to explore its potential interiority and circulation. This thesis engages with the great museums that initiated 21st Century architecture such as the Guggenheim of Bilbao, the Jewish Museum of Berlin and most importantly, investigation into the design of Te Papa Tongarewa to analyse their method of circulation. For these museums both encapsulate the heritage of their location as well as defining future possibilities for museum architecture. This thesis re-imagines the possibilities of the National Museum of New Zealand. This will be investigated through the tools of circulation and the experiential qualities that the architecture initiates as our bodies and the way we move are in continuous dialogue with our architecture. This thesis investigates the importance and functionality of atrium designs, as well as the influence it has on the structures circulatory system. Exploring the potential of an Athfield / Gehry design will inspire an alternate reality to what could have been.</p>

Experiencing Cultural Institutions as National Artefacts: Exploring the use of Black in New Zealand Museum Architecture to Convey National Identity

<p>The demand in New Zealand for cultural institutions to promote artefacts of national significance was identified by the Wellington City Council as part of an initiative to further acknowledge cultural identities within the capital. This thesis investigates opportunities for New Zealand’s cultural institutions, particularly its museums, to be experienced themselves as national artefacts, promoting national identity not just through the display of New Zealand’s national collections, but also through the identity and experience of the architecture that contains those collections. This research aims to develop a museum that integrates the theories of new museology and narrative based design as an experiential understanding of national collections with sociologist Dr Prudence Stone’s theory regarding the significance of black to New Zealand. Stone’s theory highlights the significance of black through four central themes - creation, death transgression and race. Each of these themes will therefore be applied to New Zealand artists Ralph Hotere, Bill Culbert and Colin McCahon to test how black as an expression of cultural identity within New Zealand can be applied to New Zealand architecture. These three New Zealand artists were selected as they all relate to Stone’s analysis of the significance of black to New Zealand, analysing how black has been applied to express a national identity within New Zealand. Black as an expression of cultural identity within New Zealand was chosen to develop as research highlighted the significant number of artefacts representing black as an expression of cultural identity within the archives of the National Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa. This design case study proposes a museum within the alleyway Farmers Lane, Wellington. This site provides a spatial investigation from darkness up to the light while further thematically creating constraints to extend the outcome of the design. The museum therefore creates a vertical gallery that spatially explores themes from artists Ralph Hotere, Bill Culbert and Colin McCahon, three distinct New Zealand artists who symbolically employ black to convey a national identity. The design is therefore divided into three datums, each representing a distinct characteristic of the thematic understanding of black within New Zealand as identified by each of the three artists. Overall this research suggests the architectural experience of a discrete collection of acclaimed national artists working within a common national theme can be exhibited so that there is no longer the need for an anonymous, context free white walled approach within museum design. Instead the architectural experience has the opportunity to become one of the exhibitions of black’s symbolic national identity.</p>

Experiencing Cultural Institutions as National Artefacts: Exploring the use of Black in New Zealand Museum Architecture to Convey National Identity

<p>The demand in New Zealand for cultural institutions to promote artefacts of national significance was identified by the Wellington City Council as part of an initiative to further acknowledge cultural identities within the capital. This thesis investigates opportunities for New Zealand’s cultural institutions, particularly its museums, to be experienced themselves as national artefacts, promoting national identity not just through the display of New Zealand’s national collections, but also through the identity and experience of the architecture that contains those collections. This research aims to develop a museum that integrates the theories of new museology and narrative based design as an experiential understanding of national collections with sociologist Dr Prudence Stone’s theory regarding the significance of black to New Zealand. Stone’s theory highlights the significance of black through four central themes - creation, death transgression and race. Each of these themes will therefore be applied to New Zealand artists Ralph Hotere, Bill Culbert and Colin McCahon to test how black as an expression of cultural identity within New Zealand can be applied to New Zealand architecture. These three New Zealand artists were selected as they all relate to Stone’s analysis of the significance of black to New Zealand, analysing how black has been applied to express a national identity within New Zealand. Black as an expression of cultural identity within New Zealand was chosen to develop as research highlighted the significant number of artefacts representing black as an expression of cultural identity within the archives of the National Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa. This design case study proposes a museum within the alleyway Farmers Lane, Wellington. This site provides a spatial investigation from darkness up to the light while further thematically creating constraints to extend the outcome of the design. The museum therefore creates a vertical gallery that spatially explores themes from artists Ralph Hotere, Bill Culbert and Colin McCahon, three distinct New Zealand artists who symbolically employ black to convey a national identity. The design is therefore divided into three datums, each representing a distinct characteristic of the thematic understanding of black within New Zealand as identified by each of the three artists. Overall this research suggests the architectural experience of a discrete collection of acclaimed national artists working within a common national theme can be exhibited so that there is no longer the need for an anonymous, context free white walled approach within museum design. Instead the architectural experience has the opportunity to become one of the exhibitions of black’s symbolic national identity.</p>

Constructing Meanings: The Museum as a Stage Set for the Presentation of Archeological Collections

Museums are real places that in a dematerializing world offer an encounter between visitors and tangible objects. With the shift of museum buildings away from recognizable types to heterogeneity and experimentation, as well as the greater emphasis placed on the visitor’s engagement with the museum, the issue of the role of museum architecture in relation to the collections it is designed to accommodate has become a key challenge. This paper argues that museum buildings as organized spaces can contribute to constructing meanings and become part of the distinctive experience of the collections each museum offers. It analyses three archeological museums with newly built or extended buildings, that experiment with novel ways of presenting their collections, and shows how the tension between visitors’ paths of movement and lines of sight can become the conceptual spine of the museum displays and stage the presentation of archeological objects. Three modalities of staging are identified, suggesting a critical shift: from emphasis on a theoretical concept, to attribution of symbolic meaning, and then to embodied, sensory and affective contextualization. This is argued to reflect the “experiential turn” in museums and the increasing understanding of meaning as being grounded in our bodily experience.

Measuring the Impact of Museum Architecture, Spaces and Exhibits on Virtual Visitors Using Facial Expression Analysis Software

Since the launch of online video portals in 2005, museums have encouraged visitors to upload and share their visits online. Although much has been written about visitors’ experiences in museums, very little exists on the impact virtual visits have on viewers. In this qualitative pilot study, a total of 2035 emotional reactions were recorded and analyzed after visiting 14 online museums using a facial expression recognition software. Following open and axial coding techniques, themes and subcategories emerged. Findings showed that while the background of the participant mediated how one experiences a museum online, certain architectural and exhibit attributes, if present, triggered similar emotions to those experienced in an in-person visit. Findings suggest that experiencing museums through online video portals may be as engaging as visiting museums in person—only if the creator captures a significant proportion of architectural details, transitioning of spaces and exhibits details. Further findings showed that facial expression software reveals what captures virtual visitors’ emotions, and what architectural and exhibit features keep them curious and engaged.

OPTIMIZATION OF DAYLIGHT IN MUSUEMS AND ART GALLERIES

The aim of research is to identify the connection between daylight and museums. A museum may be a place where individuals will explore and learn the past, present and future of history, culture and science. Nowadays museum architecture emphasizes the museum for public interaction and best for education approach. The museum lighting is a challenge with daylight openings. This paper analyses the lighting environment of museum and art galleries with a satisfactory solution of daylight by using different passive design strategies without avoiding the harm to the artifacts and these parameters are good lighting solutions for existing as well as proposed building in terms of sustainability, energy consumption and perseveration. By using these parameters, we can also manage the artificial light and provide an advance solution in LED technologies and lighting solutions can be effectively used to retrofit a museum lighting environment and affecting the connection to the environment. Considering the benefits and challenges of introducing the daylight in museums and galleries. The typology of building and daylight parameters have directly impact on environment and create a visual shape in visitor’s mind. This study is based on majority of heritage buildings current deterioration state prevents those buildings from performing efficiently. A sustainable reuse approach for heritage buildings is considered essential. Old palaces that are usually reused with different functions mostly like museums for their considered interior beauty and unique rich designs. Function alteration along with a deteriorated state augments the energy consumption problem. The optimization of various skylight parameters is evaluated for their combined performance. The results disclose an improved performance which indicates the effectiveness of the energy and day lighting optimized strategies and techniques for heritage reuse. Daylight will help to create building more live, and a step to reducing the climate change and save our environment with global warming.

Photographic Exhibition In The Anti-Cube Gallery : A Case Study Of Daniel Libeskind’s Roloff Beny Gallery

This paper examines the installation of photography exhibitions within the unconventional gallery spaces that have been produced as a part of the relatively recent wave of “iconic” museum architecture. As a medium that has primarily been displayed within the modernist “white cube,” photography presents issues adapting to this new type of gallery interior. This thesis takes, as its case study, the Roloff Beny Gallery, managed by the Institute for Contemporary Culture (ICC) as located in Daniel Libeskind’s Michael Lee-Chin Crystal – a controversial addition to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), Toronto, Ontario. It examines how photographic exhibitions have addressed design and installation issues in this iconic space through three photographic exhibitions

Photographic Exhibition In The Anti-Cube Gallery : A Case Study Of Daniel Libeskind’s Roloff Beny Gallery

This paper examines the installation of photography exhibitions within the unconventional gallery spaces that have been produced as a part of the relatively recent wave of “iconic” museum architecture. As a medium that has primarily been displayed within the modernist “white cube,” photography presents issues adapting to this new type of gallery interior. This thesis takes, as its case study, the Roloff Beny Gallery, managed by the Institute for Contemporary Culture (ICC) as located in Daniel Libeskind’s Michael Lee-Chin Crystal – a controversial addition to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), Toronto, Ontario. It examines how photographic exhibitions have addressed design and installation issues in this iconic space through three photographic exhibitions