Elliptical vision.In contrast to other new galleries, where the energies of the architects have concentrated on dazzling the public with circulation spaces as promenades architecturales, Kurokawa's new museum wing is nearly all gallery. After closing for nearly a year, the Van Gogh Museum The Van Gogh Museum is a museum in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, featuring the works of the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries. It has the largest collection of Van Gogh's paintings and drawings in the world. in Amsterdam reopened in June. Renovated (by Greiner & Van Goor Architects), equipped with new airconditioning, sophisticated lighting systems and modern auditorium, Gerrit Rietveld's building continues to house the permanent collections. Temporary exhibitions have a new home in the form of Kisho Kurokawa's wing built in the Museumplein to the south an exotic monolithic presence in the park. Funded by the Japan Foundation, the building doubles the size of the original museum. Extra space was badly needed, for Van Gogh's popularity has grown to extraordinary proportions. Rietveld died in 1964 as the museum was being planned and detailed design was carried out by his disciples. When it finally opened in 1973 the building was expected to accommodate 60,000 visitors a year. About 25 years later, this figure had nearly doubled. Kurokawa's new wing, and the planned extension by Alvaro Siza, to the Stedelijk Museum The Stedelijk Museum (lit. City/Urban Museum) of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, is a museum for modern art. It is located at Museum Square ("Museumplein"), close to the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum. next door, are part of the unpopular redesign of the Museumplein by Danish landscape architect, Sven-Ingvar Andersson. Popular resentment arose out of fear of tampering with one of the few big green spaces in the city, but restoration is promised. When completed, the concentration of museums bordering the northern edge of the park will surely be one of the most exciting in the world. At street level, the wing appears to stand at a respectful distance from Rietveld's museum. Fitted onto an elliptical el·lip·tic or el·lip·ti·cal adj. 1. Of, relating to, or having the shape of an ellipse. 2. Containing or characterized by ellipsis. 3. a. site set aslant a·slant adv. & adj. At a slant; obliquely. prep. Obliquely over or across: lay the paddle aslant the gunwales. the older building, it presents a smoothly curving and impassive posterior to the Museumplein. To reduce scale, and the impact of the building on the open space and on the richly textured streets that surround it, most of it has been sunk underground. Even so, clad in polished granite and roofed in titanium, it is a striking presence when seen from the park. Charles Jencks remarked that Kurokawa's '... architecture makes a virtue of relaxed serene inclusion. Quite different from Stirling's confrontational oppositions, [his] eclectic fragments get on with each other, they almost harmonize',(1) 'Almost' is an important word, for Kurokawa's quotations are unsettled by asymmetry, essential in traditional Japanese aesthetics The study of Japanese aesthetics involves the standards of what is considered tasteful or beautiful in Japanese culture. While seen as a philosophy in Western societies, the concept of aesthetics in Japan is seen as an integral part of daily life. . As asymmetry can never be complete, it negates the idea of closure and permits that of growth. The two buildings are connected by subterranean passage from the atrium of the main museum. It leads to the sunken part of the wing which you encounter first as a glazed ambulatory. Tracing the elliptical line of the site this curves from entrance round a courtyard which, paved with stone and washed by water, is intended as an abstract evocation of a Japanese garden Japanese gardens (Kanji 日本庭園, nihon teien), that is, gardens in traditional Japanese style, can be found at private homes, in neighborhood or city parks, at Buddhist temples or Shinto shrines, and at historical landmarks such as old castles. .' This approach to the main part of the wing is delightful; from the diaphanous corridor you look across shimmering shim·mer intr.v. shim·mered, shim·mer·ing, shim·mers 1. To shine with a subdued flickering light. See Synonyms at flash. 2. water to the transparent halls. The face of the building, glazed below and clad in a swath of silvery titanium above, is canted cant 1 n. 1. Angular deviation from a vertical or horizontal plane or surface; an inclination or slope. 2. A slanted or oblique surface. 3. a. A thrust or motion that tilts something. over the courtyard and broken at the upper level by projecting aluminum-clad cube, set squarely within the ellipse ellipse, closed plane curve consisting of all points for which the sum of the distances between a point on the curve and two fixed points (foci) is the same. It is the conic section formed by a plane cutting all the elements of the cone in the same nappe. but aslant the building line (you register the asymmetry subliminally). Held within the eccentric ellipse, the orthogonal geometry of this main face makes obeisance to Rietveld. There is a close correspondence between exterior and interior of building, so you can almost read the internal spaces from outside. The curving titanium roof, raised like a saucepan lid, admits glazed crescents front and back which shed luminance The amount of brightness, measured in lumens, that is given off by a pixel or area on a screen. For example, dark red and bright red would have the same chrominance, but a different luminance. over galleries beneath, light glancing off white walls finished in glass film and expanses of wooden floors. On the southern side the crescent illuminates a soaring double-height gallery with a curving outer wall. Beneath it, in the subterranean part of the building, light airy galleries enclosed by glass walls give onto the sunken courtyard. A fragile flight of glass balustraded stairs, toplit on the west, rises from basement to top (first) floor of the building, its curving trajectory lent dynamism by opposition to the crescent's curve. At first floor level, two corridors lining the void on the north give access to the enclosed cube. Here the darkened dark·en v. dark·ened, dark·en·ing, dark·ens v.tr. 1. a. To make dark or darker. b. To give a darker hue to. 2. To fill with sadness; make gloomy. 3. galleries are designed to provide the right environment for Van Gogh's wonderful collection of Japanese Ukiyo-e - the school of Japanese art Japanese art, works of art created in the islands that make up the nation of Japan. Early Works The earliest art of Japan, probably dating from the 3d and 2d millennia B.C. that took everyday life as its subject and embraced the work of artists such as Hokusai and Utamaro. 1 See p30 of Jencks' introductory essay, 'Kurokawa's Double Vision - From Metabolism to Fractals' in the catalogue published by BookART, of the Kurokawa exhibition. Architect Kisho Kurokawa This article is about a recently deceased person. Some information, such as the circumstances of the person's death and surrounding events, may change rapidly as more facts become known. , Tokyo http://www.kisho.co.jp/ Photographs Sels-Clerbout, except no 3 by Christian Richters |
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