Independent UK production company Chief has completed The Masterplan, a new documentary exploring the architectural and cultural transformation of Battersea Power Station in London. After decades of disuse, areas of the station were repurposed by WilkinsonEyre for housing and retail through a £9 billion ($12.2 billion USD) overhaul completed in 2022, with Foster + Partners designing a new Apple Store for the station in 2023. Directed by Chief’s Nate Camponi and commissioned by Stripe Communications and the Battersea Power Station Development Group, the new film presents an in-depth account of the power station’s history, from its origins as an industrial landmark to its revival as a mixed-use cultural destination. The film uses a combination of historical narrative, visual storytelling, and personal reflections to document the complex process of redeveloping the site and its evolving relationship with the city. Jason Flemyng as The Raconteur in The Masterplan. Image courtesy: ChiefA...

Whether you’re heading to this year’s Biennale, planning a future visit, or simply daydreaming about Venice, this guide—contributed by Hamilton-based architect Bill Curran—offers insights and ideas for exploring the canal-crossed city. Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go. – Truman Capote Venice is my mystical addiction and I soon will make my 26th trip there, always for about 10 days or more. I keep getting asked why, and asked by other architects to share what to do and what to see. Only Italo Calvino could have reimagined (in ‘Invisible Cities’) such a magical, unique place, a water-born gem forged from 120 islands linked by 400 bridges and beset by a crazy-quilt medieval street and canal pattern. Abstract, dancing light forms dappling off water, the distinct automobile-less quiet. La Serenissima, The Most Serene One. Most buildings along the Grand Canal were warehouses with the family home above on the piano nobile floor above, and servant apartments above that in the attics, in a sea-faring nation state of global traders and merchants like Marco Polo. Uniquely built on a foundation of 1,000-year-old wood pilings, its uneven, wonky buildings have forged a rich place in history, literature and movies: Joseph Brodsky’s Watermark, Hemingway’s Across the River and into the Trees, Don’t Look Now starring Donald Sutherland, Mann’s Death in Venice, The Comfort of Strangers with Christopher Walken, Henry James’ The Wings of the Dove and The Aspern Papers, Kate Hepburn’s ‘Summertime. Yes, yes, Ruskin’s Stones of Venice is an option, as are Merchant of Venice and Casanova. Palazzo Querini Stampalia (Venice): Photo via Wikipedia THE MODERN ARCHITECTURE OF VENICE Much of Venetian life is lived in centuries-old buildings, with a crushing post-war recession leaving it preserved in amber for decades until the mass tourists found it. Now somewhat relieved of at least the cruise ship daytrippers, it is a reasonable place again, except maybe in peak summer. The weight of history, a conservatism for preservation and post-war anti-Americanism led to architectural stagnation. So there are few new, modern buildings, mostly on the edges, and some fine interior interventions, mostly invisible. For modern architecture enthusiasts Venice is a challenge. Carlo Scarpa (Giardini, Venise) – Photo via Wikipedia, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license Here is what modern architects should see: Carlo Scarpa‘s Must-See Works: Go see any of Scarpa’s interventions, demonstrating his mastery of detailing, materials, joinery and his approach to blending with existing fabric. He is Italy’s organicist, their Frank Lloyd Wright, and they even worked together (on the Masieri Foundation). Negozio Olivetti: The tiny former Olivetti typewriter showroom enfronting Piazza San Marco is perhaps the most wonderful of his works. It is open now to visit as a heritage museum. ”God is in the details”; Scarpa carefully considered every detail, material and connection. Le magasin Olivetti de Carlo Scarpa (Venise). Photo via Wikipedia. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license The Fondazione Querini Stampalia is a must see, a renovated palazzo with ground floor exhibit spaces with tidewater allowed to rise up inside in one area you bridge across. The former entrance bridge is a lovely gem of exquisite detailing, rendered obsolete by a meh renovation by Mario Botta. A MUST is to have a coffee or prosecco in Scarpa’s garden and see the craft and detail of its amazing water feature. The original palazzo rooms are a lovely semi-public library inhabited by uni students; sign up as a member on-line for free. Walk up the spiral stair. The entry gate to the UIAV Architecture School in Campo Tolentini  is an unexpected wonder. A brutalist yet crisply detailed sliding concrete and steel gate, a sculpted concrete lychgate, then an ancient doorway placed on the lawn as a basin. Main Gate of the Tolentini building headquarters of Iuav university of Venice designed by Carlo Scarpa. Photo via Wikipedia, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license OTHER MODERN ARCHITECTURE TO SEE: Minimalist Dave Chipperfield expanded an area of suede-like concrete columbariums on the St. Michele cemetery island. Sublime. Extra points if you can find the tomb Scarpa designed nearby. The Ponte della Costituzione (English: Constitution Bridge) is the fourth bridge over the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy. It was designed by Santiago Calatrava. (Image via: Wikipedia) Calatrava’s Ponte della Constituzione bridge is an elegant, springing gazelle over the entrance to the Grand Central. But the glass steps are slippery and are being replaced soon, and the City is suing Calatrava, oops. The barrier-free lift pod died soon after opening. It is lovely though.   Le Canal della Giudecca, la Punta della Dogana, la basilique Santa Maria della Salute de Venise et le Canal Grande à Venise (Italie). Photo via Wikipedia Tadao Ando’s Punte Della Dognana museum is large, with sublime, super-minimalist, steel and glass and velvety exposed concrete interventions, while his Palazzo Grassi Museum was more restoration. A little known fact is that Ando used Scarpa’s lovely woven basketweave metal gate design in homage. An important hidden gem is the Teatrino Grassi behind the Museum, a small but fabulous, spatially dramatic theatre that often has events, a must-see! Fondaco dei Tedeschi: At the foot of Rialto Bridge and renovated by Rem Koolhaas, this former German trading post had been transformed into a luxury shopping mall but closed last month, a financial failure. Graced with a stunning atrium and a not well know fabulous rooftop viewing terrace, its future is now uncertain. The atrium bar is by Phillipe Starck and is cool. Try it just in case. Fondaco dei Tedeschi. Photo via Wikipedia Procuratie Vecchie: This iconic 16th storey building is one of Piazza San Marco’s defining buildings, and David Chipperfield’s restoration and renovation of this building, which defines Piazza San Marco, is all about preservation with a few modern, minimalist interventions. It operates as a Biennale exhibit space. Infill housing on former industrial sites on Guidecca Island includes several interesting new developments called the Fregnans, IACP and Junghans sites (look for fine small apartments such as by Cino Zucchi that reinterpret traditional Venetian apartment language). A small site called Campo di Marte includes side-by-sides by Alvaro Siza (disappointing), Aldo Rossi and Carlo Aymonino (ho hum); some day there will be a Rafael Moneo on the empty lot.     View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Denton Corker Marshall (@dentoncorkermarshall) AT THE BIENNALE: At the Biennale grounds there is much to see, with the only recent project the Australia Pavilion by Denton Corker, a black granite box hovering along a canal. Famous buildings include the Nordic Pavilion (Sven Ferre), Venezuela Pavilion (Carlo Scarpa), Finland Pavilion (Alvar Aalto), former Ticket Booth (Carlo Scarpa), Giardino dell Sculture (Carlo Scarpa), Bookstore (James Stirling) and there are some fab modern interiors inside the old boat factory buildings. Canada’s Pavilion by the Milan firm BBPR (don’t ask why) from 1956 is awkward, weird and much loathed by artists and curators. Le pavillon des pays nordiques (Giardini, Venise). Photo via Wikipedia, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Just outside the Biennale on the Zattere waterfront is a stirring Monument to the Women Partisans of WWII, laid in the water by Augusto Maurer over a simple stepped-base designed by Scarpa. Venezia – Complesso monastico di San Giorgio Maggiore. Photo via Wikipedia,  licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. BEYOND THE BIENNALE The Vatican Chapels: In 2018 the Vatican decided to participate in the Biennale for the first time for some reason and commissioned ten architects to design chapels that are located in a wooded area on the Venetian island of San Giorgio Maggiore, behind Palladio’s church. The architects include Norman Foster, Eduardo Souto de Moura, and Smiljan Radic, and includes The Asplund Pavilion, like the Woodland Chapel  that inspired it. It is intended as a “place of orientation, encounter, meditation, and salutation.” The 10 chapels each symbolize one of the Ten Commandments, and offer 10 unique interpretations of the original Woodland Chapel; many are open air. These are fab and make you think! Chiese San Giorgio Maggiore was designed by Palladio and is fine. But its bell tower offers magnificent city views and avoids the long lines, crowds and costs of Piazza San Marco’s Campanile. Next to San Giorgio you should tour the Cini Foundation, with an amazing stair by Longhera, the modern Monica Lunga Library (Michele De Lucchi) and a lovely Borges-inspired labyrinth garden. Behind San Giorgio en route to the Chapels is the Museo del Vetro (Glass Museum) and the fabulous Le Stanze della Fotografia (contemporary photography gallery) featuring a Mapplethorpe retrospective this year. (If you’re visiting this year, join me in Piazza San Marco on July 7, 2025, for his ex Patti Smith’s concert.) An unknown MUST DO is a concert in the stunning Auditorium Lo Squero (Cattaruzza Millosevich), with but 200 comfy seats in an adapted boat workshop with a stage wall of glass onto the lagoon and the Venitian cityscape. La Fenice Opera House in Venice, Italy. Image via: Wikipedia La Fenice Opera House: after burning down in 1996, Aldo Rossi supervised the rebuilding, more or less ‘as it was, as it is’, the Italian heritage cop-out. There is no Rossi to see here, but it is a lovely grand hall. Book a concert with private box seats. Venice Marco Polo Airport is definitely Aldo Rossi-inspired in its language, materials and colours. The ‘Gateway Terminal’ boat bus and taxi dock is a true grand gateway (see note about Gehry having designed an unbuilt option below). Venice Marco Polo airport. Photo via Wikipedia HIDDEN GEMS Fondazione Vendova by Renzo Piano features automated displays of huge paintings by a local abstract modernist moving about a wonderful huge open warehouse and around viewers. Bizarre and fascinating. Massimo Scolari was a colleague or Rossi’s and is a brilliant, Rationalist visionary and painter, renown to those of us devotees of the Scarpa/Rossi/Scolari cult in the 1980’s. His ‘Wings’ sculpture is a large scale artwork motif from his drawings now perched on the roof of the UIAV School of Architecture, and from the 1991 Biennale. Do yourself a favour, dear reader, look up his work. Krier, Duany and the New Urbanists took note. He reminds me of the 1920s Italian Futurists. You can tour all the fine old churches you want, but only one matters to me: Santa Maria dei Miracoli, a barrel-vaulted, marble and wood-roofed confection. San Nicolo dei Mendicoli is admittedly pretty fab, and featured in ‘Don’t Look Now’.  And the Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta on Torcello has an amazing mosaic floor, very unusual stone slab window shutters (and is near Locanda Cipriani for a wonderful garden lunch, where Hemingway sat and wrote). For the Scarpiani: There is a courtroom, the Manilo Capitolo, inside the Venice Civic Tribunale building in the Rialto Market that was renovated by Scarpa, and is amazing in its detail, including furniture and furnishings. You have to pass security to get in, and wait until court ends if on. It is worth it! The Aula Mario Baratto is a large classroom in a Palazzo overlooking the Grand Canal designed by Carlo Scarpa with amazing wood details and furniture. The room has stunning frescoes also. You can book a tour through Universite Ca’ Foscari. The view at a bend in the Grand Canal is stunning, and you can see the Fondazione Masieri (Scarpa renovation) building off to the left across the side canal (see Missed Opportunities). Within the Accademia Galleries and Correr Museum are a number of small renovations, stairs and art stands designed by Scarpa. Next to the Chiesa di San Sebastino decorated by Veronese is the Scarpa entrance to a linguistics library for the Universita Ca’ Foscari. Fondation W – Wilmotte & Associés: A French architect who is not shy and presumably rather wealthy runs his own exhibition space focused on architecture; ‘…it is both a laboratory and shop window…’,  so one of those. Worth a look. There is a recent Courthouse that is sleek, long, narrow, black and compelling on the north side of Piazzalle Roma, but I have not yet wandered in.   FOOD AND DRINKS FOR ARCHITECTS Philippe Starck’s lobby bar at the Palazzina Grassi hotel is the only cool, mod bar in town. Wow! Ask the barman to see the secret Krug Room and use the PG bar’s unique selfie washroom. I love this bar: old, new, electic. Also, Starck has a house on Burano, next to the pescheria (sorry, useless ephemera). He wants you to drop by. Restaurant Algiubagiò is the only cool, modern restaurant and it has fab food. It also has a great terrace over the water. Go! Zanze XVI is a nice clean mod interior and Michelin food. Worth it. Ristorante Lineadombra: A lovely, crisp modern interior and crisp modern Venetian food. A great terrace on the water also. Local Venice is a newer, clean, crisp resto with ‘interesting’ prices. Your call. Osteria Alla Bifora, while in a traditional workshop space, is a clean open loft, adorned modernly with a lovely array of industrial and historic relics. It is a lovely bar with charcuterie and a patio on the buzzy campo for students. Great for late night. Cicchetti are Venetian tapas, a standard lunch you must try. All’ Arco near Rialto has excellent nouveau food and 50m away is the lovely old school Do Mori. Osteria Al Squero in Dorsoduro overlooks one of the last working gondola workshops, and 100m away is the great Cantino del Vino già Schiavi. Basegò has creative, nouveau cichetti. Drinks on a patio along the Grand Canal can only be had economically at Taverna al Remer, or in Campo Erberia at Nanzaria, Bancogira, Al Pesador or Osteria Al Cichetteria. Avoid any place around Rialto Bridge except these. El Sbarlefo San Pantalon has a Scarpa vibe and a hip, young crowd. There is a Banksy 50’ away. Ristorante Venissa is a short bridge from Burano to Mazzorbo island, a Michelin-starred delight set in its own vineyard.   Since restaurant design cannot tie you up here, try some fab local joints: Trattoria Anzolo Raffaele : The owner’s wife is from Montreal, which is something. A favorite! Pietra Rossa: A fab, smart place with a hidden garden run by a hip, fun young restauranteur, Andrea. Ask for the Canadian architect discount. Oste Mauro Lorenzon : An entertaining wine and charcuterie bar run by the hip young restauranteur’s larger than life father, and nearby. Mauro is a true iconoclast. Only open evenings and I dare you to hang there late. Anice Stellato: A great family run spot, especially for fish. Excellent food always. La Colonna Ristorante: A nice, neighbourhood joint hidden in a small campo. Il Paradiso Perduto: A very lively joint with good food and, rarely in Venice, music. Buzzy and fun. Busa da Lele: Great neighbourhood joint on Murano in a lovely Campo. Trattoria Da Romano: Best local joint on Burano. Starck hangs here, as did Bourdain.   Cafes: Bacaro aea Pescaria is at the corner by Campo de la Becarie. Tiny, but run by lovely guys who cater to pescaria staff. Stand outside with a prosecco and watch the market street theatre. Extra points if you come by for a late night drink. Bar ai Artisti is my second fav café, in Campo S. Barnaba facing where Kate Hepburn splashed into the canal. Real, fab pastries, great terrace in Campo too. Café at Querini Stampalia: get a free visit to Scarpa’s garden and wander it with a coffee or prosecco. Make sure to see the bookstore also (and the Scarpa exhibition hall adjacent). Carlo Scarpa à la Fondation Querini Stampalia (Venise). Photo via Wikipedia, A lesser known place is the nice café in the Biennale Office next to Hotel Monaco, called Ombra del Leone. The café in the Galleria Internationale d’Arte Moderna Ca’ Pesaro is great with a terrace on the Grand Canal.   Cocktail bars: Retro Venezia: Cool, retro vibe. The owner’s wife dated a Canadian hockey player. You must know him. Il Mercante: A fabulous cocktail bar. Go. Time Social Bar:  Another cool cocktail bar. Vero Vino: A fab wine bar where you can sit along a canal. Many good restaurants nearby! Arts Bar Venice: If you must have a cocktail with a compelling story, and are ok with a $45 pricetag. Claims Scarpa design influence, I say no. But read the cocktail stories, they are smart and are named for artists including Scarpa. Bar Longhi in in the Gritti Hotel is a classic, although cheesey to me. Hemingway liked it. It has a Grand Canal terrace. The Hilton Stucky Hotel is a fabulous former flour factory from when they built plants to look like castles, but now has a bland, soulless Hilton interior like you are in Dayton. But it has a rooftop bar and terrace with amazing sunset views! While traditional, the stunning, ornate lobby, atrium and main stair of the Hotel Danieli are a must-see. Have a drink in the lobby bar by the piano player some evening.   STAYING MODERN Palazzina Grassi is the only modern hotel in Venice, with a really lovely, unique lobby/bar/restaurant all done by Philippe Starck. At least see the fab bar! Johnny Depp’s favourite. Generator Hostel: A hip new-age ‘design-focused’ hostel well worth a look. Not like any hostel I ever patronized, no kegs on the porch. Go visit the lobby for the design. A Euro chain. DD724 is a small boutique hotel by an Italian architect with thoughtful detailing and colours, near the Peggy Guggenheim Museum (the infamous Unfinished Palazzo), and they have a small remote outpost with fabulous apartment called iQS that is lovely. The owner’s brother is the architect. My fave! Avogaria: Not just a 5 room hotel, it is ‘a concept’, which is great, right?  But very cool. An architect is one of the owners. German minimalist architect Matteo Thun’s JW Mariott Venice Resort Hotel and Spa is an expensive convent renovation on its own lagoon island that shows how blandness is yawningly close to minimalism. The Hotel Bauer Palazzo has a really lovely mid-century modern section facing Campo San Moise, but it is shrouded in construction scaffolding for now.   SHOPPING MODERN FOR ARCHITECTS It is hard to find cool modern shopping options, but here is where you can: Libreria Acqua Alta: Used books and a lovely, unexpected, fab, alt experience. You must see and wander this experience! It has cats too. Giovanna Zanella: Shoes that are absolute works of art! At least look in her window. Bancolotto N10: Stunning women’s clothing made in the women’ prison as a job skill training program. Impeccable clothes; save a moll from a life of crime. Designs188: Giorgio Nason makes fabulous glass jewellery around the corner from the Peggy Guggenheim Museum. Davide Penso: Artisan made glass jewellery on Murano. Ferrovetro Murano: Artisan made jewellery, bags, scarfs. (on Murano). Madera: All the cool designer housewares and jewellery. DECLARE: Cool, modern leathergoods in a very sweet modern shop with exquisite metal detailing. A must see! Ottica Urbani: Cool Italian eyewear and sunglasses. Paperowl: Handmade paper, products, classes. Feeling Venice: Cool design and tourist bling can be found only here. No shot glasses.   MISSED OPPORTUNITIES, MEMORIES AND B-SIDES The Masieri Foundation: Look up the tragic story of this project, a lovely, small memorial to a young architect who died in a car accident on his honeymoon en route to visit Fallingwater in 1952. Yep. His widow commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design a small student residence and study centre, but it was stopped by anti-American and anti-Modernism sentiments. (Models and renderings are on-line). This may be Venice’s saddest architectural loss ever. The consolation prize is a very, very lovely Scarpa interior reno. Try to get in, ring the bell (it is used as offices by the university)! (Read Troy M. Ainsworth’s thesis on the Masieri project history). Also cancelled: Lou Kahn’s Palace of Congress set for the Arsenale, Corbusier’s New Venice Hospital which would have been sitting over the Lagoon in Cannaregio near the rail viaduct, Gehry’s Venice Gateway (the airport’s ferry/water taxi dock area). Also lost was Rossi’s temporary Teatro del Mondo, a barged small theatre that tooted around Venice and was featured in a similar installation in 1988 at the R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant. All available on-line. Teatro del Mondo di Aldo Rossi, Venezia 1980. Photo via Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 Itches to scratch: Exercise your design skills to finish the perennial favorite ‘Unfinished Palazzo’ of the Peggy Guggenheim Museum, design a new Masieri Foundation, design the 11th Vatican Chapel or infill the derelict gasometer site next to Palladio’s Chiese San Francisco della Vigna.   FURTHER AFIELD Within an hour’s drive, you can see the simply amazing Tombe Brion in San Vito Altivole and the tiny, stunning Giptotecha Canova in Possagna (both by Scarpa), the Nardini Grappa Distillery in Bassano del Grappa by Maximillio Fuksas, and a ferry and taxi will get you to Richard Meier’s Jesolo Lido Condos on the beach. A longer drive of two hours into the mountains near Cortina will bring you to Scarpa’s lovely and little known Nostra Signore di Cadora Church. It is sublime! Check out the floor! Zaha Hadid’s stunning Messner Mountain Museum floats above Cortina, accessible by cable car. The recent M-09 Museum on mainland Mestre, a quick 10 minute train ride from Venice, by Sauerbruch + Hutton is a lovely urban museum with dynamic cladding. Castelvecchio Museum. Photo via Wikipedia The Veneto region is home to many cool things, and fab train service gets you quickly to Verona (Scarpa’s Castelvecchio Museum and Banco Populare), Vicenza (Palladio’s Villa Rotonda and Basillicata). There are Palladio villas scattered about the Veneto, and you can daytrip by canal boat from Venice to them. Go stand where Hemingway was wounded in WWI near Fossalta Di Piave (there is a plaque), which led to his famous novel, ‘A Farewell to Arms’. He never got to visit Venice until 1948, then fell in love with the city, leading to ‘Across the River and into the Trees’. He also threatened to burn down FLW’s Masieri Foundation if built (and they both came from Oak Park, Illinois. So not very neighborly).   OTHER GOOD ARCHITECTURAL REFERENCES Venice Modern Architecture Map The only guidebook to Modern Architecture in Venice   These architectural guide folks do tours geared to architects: Architecture Tour Venice – Guiding Architects Venice Architecture City Guide: 15 Historical and Contemporary Attractions to Discover in Italy’s City of Canals | ArchDaily Venice architecture, what to see: buildings by Scarpa, Chipperfield and other great architects The post An Architect’s Guide to Venice and its Modern Architecture    appeared first on Canadian Architect.

Julian Rose’s Building Cultures, published last year by Princeton Architectural Press, contains 16 in-depth interviews with leading architects who have designed museums around the world. In 2022, András Szántó’s Imagining the Future Museum: 21 Dialogues with Architects, published by Hatje Cantz, offered a complementary glimpse into the sensibilities of a new generation of voices. (The titles share four interviewees: David Adjaye, David Chipperfield, Elizabeth Diller, and Kulapat Yantrasat) Rose and Szántó sat down with AN’s executive editor Jack Murphy to discuss the museum’s inexhaustible spatial variety and its capacity to shape civic and cultural space today. Julian Rose’s Building Cultures, published last year by Princeton Architectural Press, contains 16 interviews with architects. (Courtesy Princeton Architectural Press) AN: Julian, what are the major themes, concerns, and anxieties that you heard when interviewing architects about designing museums? Julian Rose (JR): The conversations in Building Culture grew out of my time at Artforum, so they began nearly 10 years ago in a pretty different world. In that context, one important theme was looking at the museum to understand how architecture relates to arts. Architects, either by choice or because the culture at large compels them to, are always defining what they do in relation to other cultural practices, especially the visual arts. This relationship goes back to the modernist avant-garde, and you could trace it even further. I was drawn towards architects who had deep connections to art, maybe they had even gone to art school or had a record of collaboration; not coincidentally, a lot of them have become known as museum specialists. The answers I heard were refreshing; people were not necessarily learning the lessons I expected. As an example: With Peter Zumthor, I thought we were going to have a focused conversation about the very architectural aesthetics and materials used by certain artists like Richard Serra or Donald Judd. No—he wanted to talk about the bigger picture, the emotional and philosophical connections. He’s obsessed with Walter de Maria’s landscape works like Lightning Field. Even if they don’t seem to have an obvious connection to architecture, he loves the scale and ambition. This kind of surprise happened in several conversations. The other key topic is the typological problem of the museum. As I write in my introduction, the museum refuses spatial optimization—there’s no “best” way to design one. In part, that’s because contemporary art is evolving. Look at the popularity of large-scale installations today, which require big open spaces, versus the more old-fashioned idea of a museum being the place you go to have a one-on-one moment with a masterpiece, which needs intimate galleries. Until recently, “public art” was a kind of forlorn category. It was something you might happen on in a park or a subway station, and it was separate from what most people thought of as real art, which of course was what you saw in the museum. And you went to the museum to have what was essentially a private experience of that art. Now you go to the museum to have an experience that’s both aesthetic and social—to look at art and to enjoy a public space—and I think that’s a huge part of why museums are so popular today. One of the fundamental takeaways from the book is that contemporary art is becoming more and more public, and the evolution of the art museum has been a crucial part of that shift. Artists are creating work that’s meant to be experienced by many people at once, and they need new spaces to do that. At the same time, all the architects wanted to talk about circulation, because there is a tension on some level between how we traditionally think of experiencing art and the crowds that certain museums are starting to receive. András Szántó’s Imagining the Future Museum: 21 Dialogues with Architects also features interviews with leading architects who design museums (Hatje Cantz) AN: András, how does this compare to how you approached your book? András Szántó (AS): One reason why the two books are quite complementary is that their genesis is so different. Julian, your book approaches its subjects with an interest in their relationship to art and their creative work. For me, the direction of travel was different. My talks came out of a previous book, which I did during the pandemic, for which I interviewed museum directors about how their institutions are changing. Rather than reviewing past projects, I was interested in the architects’ overall perspective on the museum as a form. Generally, there is the idea that architecture saved the visual arts from the fate of other forms of high art. And there has been a post-pandemic realization that you can do highly elitist and exclusive architecture in the language of modern design, just as you can using neoclassical architecture. We see a reckoning for how to realign museums to serve a wider segment of the population, not just the creation of these beautiful confections to attract the wealthy, highly educated cultural tourists of the world, but maybe the ability to send the message to someone who lives two miles away, “This is for you.” Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, Sainsbury Wing, National Gallery, London, U.K., 1991 (Matt Wargo) Sainsbury Wing renovation by Selldorf Architects (Edmund Sumner/©The National Gallery London) AN: How did you go about selecting the architects you wanted to interview? AS: You consign yourself to a lifetime of apologies to people who you didn’t interview. I wanted to be global, so I didn’t stack my book with New York–based architects. I wanted to attempt a gender balance, which was difficult. Again, I think our books work well together, Julian, because you spoke with a lot of people on my dream list. JR: I agree that our books are a good pair; it was fun for me to read your book when mine was in progress. I was first educated as an architect, but I’m also coming at this as a historian, so the idea was trying to figure out how we got here: How did museums become so important? I think that the success of both the museum and contemporary art in general is a bit of a surprise to everyone. In this century, we’ve seen so many traditional “highbrow” forms of culture get pushed to the periphery, but museums are thriving. I thought about Building Culture as an oral history project. I almost did the opposite of András: I have a couple younger voices, but I wanted to speak with established figures because that generation has shaped the present and has ideas about the future, too. Frank Gehry was one of the first people I interviewed; he’s 96 and he still has important museums under construction. It was interesting to ask Renzo Piano what he thinks is next. People like Frank and Renzo have had plenty of media exposure, but I did feel like there was a certain depth missing from journalistic coverage. I wanted to do a relatively small number of longer conversations and cover the widest historical range I could. I was thrilled to have Denise Scott Brown in there, because the Sainsbury Wing [of the National Gallery, London] alone is a paradigm-shifting project. She’s part of a whole generation that had a huge impact through postmodern museum designs, although most of [her peers] are no longer with us. That felt important to capture. Gehry Partners, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, 1997 (Courtesy Gehry Partners, LLP/© Frank O. Gehry) AS: We’re discussing the success of contemporary visual art, which for most people feels inscrutable and hard to access. You had an interesting thought experiment: What would the same art have done without the scaffolding of the museum around it? The art museum could have become a dusty, irrelevant thing—and often still is—but through the efforts of a new generation of museum experts, working together with architects, communicators, and other specialists, this form has been lifted up and made super contemporary through, frankly, a lot of the functions that were seen as somewhat secondary. This is where the rubber meets the road for architects: So many of the metrics, even the audience metrics, are related to the non-gallery functions of the museum. People flock to the museum as a place, and this is where architecture, landscape architecture, and interior design have been superb. Museums have become civic hubs, which was maybe a secondary concern initially. That’s why people like Piano and Gehry are interesting, because they came up having to work in both worlds. They created this highly successful institutional typology, which still has those art at its core, but it’s the civic infrastructure that is the most successful. JR: Museums have always had a civic function, but almost as a secondary part of the program. With an institution like the Centre Pompidou in Paris the civic aspect starts to dominate. Meanwhile, all of these other institutions that used to provide shared social space have largely disappeared, which has an isolating and alienating effect on culture. It’s funny: Civic engagement started out as almost an afterthought, but it has become a crucial function of the museum in the 21st century. AS: Another point to make about generations: Do not confuse age with being namby-pamby or conservative. Today’s older architects are people of the 1960s, absolutely. Many, like Elizabeth Diller and David Chipperfield, were more radical then than some of our younger architects are today. They did not necessarily expect to be multimillionaires. They were devoted to the public sphere. These “older” figures who now get giant commissions are, on a DNA level, super radical people. JR: Richard Gluckman is another important example. Like Chipperfield, he has a direct connection to modernism through his education. We can talk all day about modernism as a failed project, but the fact is that back when people like Richard and David were in school, architecture was still seen as a fundamental part of the progressive state. Gluckman went to school at Syracuse University in the late 1960s, and as a student he worked for his professors exclusively on projects like housing and university campuses. But by the time he got around to opening his own office, it was 1977. New York had almost gone bankrupt—no one was building that stuff anymore. Gluckman got involved in designing spaces for art, and this was his way of basically sneaking back into the public sphere. I think their generation was connected to a very different—and very powerful—understanding of what architecture meant for society, and you still see that in their work today. AS: We can think about the art museum as a scaffolding building around a core enterprise of artistic experience. But this means something different for collecting versus non-collecting institutions. Often, you find institutions places that are dedicating more and more of their space to social functions around the art, contemplative aspects of art, and so on. The best architects are absolutely capable of doing both things: One is creating transparency, porosity, ease of access, and landscape integration in a way that flows, and the other is delivering wonderful amenities like shops and cafes. We can question some old dichotomies: How hard do you have to separate gallery space and social space? How porous could those boundaries be? What everybody profoundly believes is that a successful museum experience must have a magic combination of three things: objects, humans, and architecture. And when those three things come together—incredible real objects with a social experience in the company of other people in a magisterial architectural space—that creates an enduring magic that you cannnot sacrifice. Shohei Shigematsu/OMA, rendering of the New Museum of Contemporary Art expansion, New York, New York, anticipated completion 2025 (Courtesy OMA/bloomimages.de) JR: It was interesting for me to think about how conservative the museum can be. My conversation with Shohei Shigematsu at OMA put that into relief for me. He was one of the lead architects for the Whitney Museum extension proposal. At the time, OMA’s whole thing was reinventing typologies for the 21st century—think CCTV twisting the skyscraper, or Seattle transforming the public library. They took that aggressive critical method to the museum too—in the 1990s for MoMA and the Tate Modern, and then to the Whitney in 2001, and didn’t win a single competition. The establishment was not interested! AS: I agree that architects are often more radical than their clients. Hopefully nobody misunderstands this, but there is often a profound disconnect between the veneration of rule-breaking, iconoclastic innovation in the gallery versus the conservatism of the museum organization. Organizationally speaking, most museums have not read an airport book on modern management. I see architects trying to push against that. An easy example: Why do these buildings still look like fortresses? Libraries have been redesigned to work for people while still accommodating books. All too often, art museums still feel like citadels with lots of walls. Why? Because walls are great for hanging art on the inside of the building. Is that really the singular goal? AN: How does the scale of the institution shape what it can do? AS: We have certainly seen the emergence of a lot of small institutes and institutions, because of the enormous expansion of private museums. I do think small scale is good. When you ask most people about their favorite museums, they will frequently mention places that are quite intimate, like the Fondation Beyeler, in Basel, by Renzo Piano, soon with a lovely modest expansion by Zumthor. Nobody likes a super tanker, which is easy to respect but hard to love. When it comes to big, we need to differentiate between the gigantic temple on the hill versus what I think could be the future: the SESC Pompéia model, an interdisciplinary, social-cultural hub that may be quite big in the aggregate, and where the visual arts play a role inside a larger matrix. Particularly in our big, sprawling cities, such multipurpose, campus-like configurations could be an ideal setting for a museum. JR: I agree that the future might be more like the biennale model: When done well, the whole city is activated. In that sense maybe the size of the institution itself is less important. But I worry that smaller institutions will be hurt as public funding dries up and all museums become increasingly reliant on philanthropy. The regional, kunsthalle-like spots will suffer because those aren’t glamorous places to give money, but those are often the locations the programming makes the biggest impact in the community. AN: What else should we discuss? AS: Globalization is worth mentioning. There is a parallel to be drawn, perhaps, to the evolution of art. At the end of the 20th century, an astonishing amount of liberation became available to artists as the master narrative of modernism splintered to a more pluralistic discourse where all kinds of positions were accepted as art. Today I think something similar has happened in museum architecture: With the proliferation of museums globally, the language of museum architecture has opened up into a new openness to difference and variation, often informed by regional, vernacular forms and needs. Museums can be built using local materials or respond to local typologies, versus the older ideas of the white cube or the enfilade gallery sequence. Anything can be a museum—not just because of reuse, which is important, but because architects can build some crazy stuff inside almost any kind of building: a power station, a prison, a hospital, an army barracks. And people will say, “That’s a museum.” JR: There’s a running joke in museum design that the Louvre is an adaptive reuse project. And it’s true: The world’s first public art museum started out as a palace. This speaks to the museum’s typological flexibility. Its program is very architectural in the sense that it’s about how people and artworks interact in space, but it’s not like an airport or a hospital with a hyper-specialized program that is understandably difficult to fit into an existing structure. I’m optimistic that museums will stay on the cutting edge of adaptive reuse even as it gets more and more important for the whole architectural profession. Another thing that came out of my book is how much museum architects pay attention to the spaces artists are working in. The New York loft is the classic example. Once upon a time, not every gallery looked like a renovated postindustrial space, but artists moved into defunct industrial spaces decades ago and eventually exhibition spaces followed. This exchange goes both ways—its dialectical. As museum buildings have gotten more varied, artists have had a lot of fun learning how to use these new spaces. The Guggenheim in New York is an example. For decades, [Frank Lloyd] Wright’s design has been criticized because it’s hard to show most traditional art forms on the spiral ramps. But the best things I’ve seen in that museum in the past ten years have been installations in the atrium. Artists can do something wild with that space. After seeing that, do you really want to look at a little painting on a curvy wall? Julian Rose is a designer, critic, and historian. He is currently completing a PhD at Princeton on the origin and evolution of museums of contemporary art. András Szántó advises museums, foundations, educational institutions, and corporations on cultural strategy and program development, worldwide. This post contains affiliate links. AN may have a commission if you make a purchase through these links.

Following our previous look at an opening for an architectural model maker at Obata Noblin Office, we are using this week’s edition of our Job Highlights series to explore an open role on Archinect Jobs for a Director of Facilities at the Norton Simon Museum. The role, based in Pasadena, calls for an individual to “oversee the physical operation of its renowned building and gardens.” Among the requirements for the role are at least ten years in facilities management and a strong working knowledge of building systems, including mechanical, electrical, and plumbing.  Image credit: Wikimedia user Tony Mariotti licensed under CC BY 2.0 Why the role interests us The open role at the Norton Simon Museum offers us the opportunity to profile the architectural qualities of the museum and gardens, which the successful candidate will ultimately be responsible for maintaining. Completed in 1969 by Pasadena architects Thornton Ladd and John Kelsey, the scheme was designed with the clean lines, o...

Paris’s 16th arrondissement is home to myriad landmarks with ties to fashion, art, and design—Musée Marmottan Monet, Frank Gehry’s Fondation Louis Vuitton, and Maison de Balzac, to name but a few. A 17th-century mansion, the former headquarters of fashion label Yves Saint Laurent, is also there. The fashion house was based  in the historic neighborhood between 1974 and 2002. In 2017, Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris opened there, together with its Moroccan counterpart, Musée Yves Saint Laurent Marrakech. Both venues host retrospectives and temporary exhibits. Now, Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris is being renovated by Selldorf Architects and Studio La Boétie, a Paris office. The project is a collaboration with Fondation Pierre Bergé—the philanthropic wing of Pierre Bergé, the French industrialist who cofounded Yves Saint Laurent. “The architectural project will double the public exhibition space, open unprecedented access to iconic areas such as Pierre Bergé’s office and enhance the visitor experience for their growing audience,” Selldorf Architects shared. The museum is home to the couturier’s former studio. (Arroser/Wikimedia Commons /CC0 1.0) Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris is sited at 5 Avenue Marceau and contains more than 2,000 works, and the couturier’s former studio. It’s a Musée de France, or one of the country’s main state museums. The venue predates the French Revolution, like much of the 16th arrondissement’s urban fabric. Thomas Gobert, King Louis XIV’s primary builder–planner, completed the building at 5 Avenue Marceau in 1685. Saint Laurent creative director Hedi Slimane oversaw its renovation prior to the museum’s 2017 opening. It’s since hosted Saint Laurent Couture fashion campaigns. The forthcoming renovation will deliver a new Documentation and Research Center that will preserve Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé’s archives. The news comes not long after other major milestone museum projects for Selldorf Architects, including the Frick’s reopening in New York, and the Sainsbury Wing’s renovation in London. “While preserving the existing architecture of the building, formerly the home of the couture house, the project aims to double the surface area accessible to the public while allowing access to iconic spaces—such as Pierre Bergé’s office—and improving the experience of an increasing visitor base,” Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris said in a statement. “The project will also optimize the conservation conditions of the museum’s collection, thanks to the permanent relocation of part of its reserves to an off-site location.” Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris will temporarily close for the renovation starting this month. It’s slated to reopen in fall 2027.

Plans for a new Louis Vuitton flagship in Beverly Hills, designed by Frank Gehry and Peter Marino at 45,000 square feet, will now move forward towards a 2029 completion. CoStar is reporting on the prospects for a construction start in late 2026 on Rodeo Drive. The two-building scheme, which will have its interiors designed by Marino, includes a pair of eateries and an exhibition space dedicated to the LVMH brand. According to the model photographed above, the project repeats aspects seen in Gehry’s design for the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris from 2014. The pair had collaborated previously on Louis Vuitton's flagship in Seoul in 2019. 

Both Canada and the United States have deep-seated affordability problems, but only the former is doing anything substantial about it. Forthcoming housing cooperatives at 2444 Eglinton Avenue in Toronto, and in Upper Hammonds Plains, Nova Scotia, are helping put a dent in Canada’s affordable housing shortage. Vancouver’s home prices today are close to $1 million, and rental prices in Toronto are equally astronomical. To buck this trend, Canada’s Co-operative Housing Development Program (CHDP) unlocked $1.5 billion in federal financing to support new cooperative housing. This is all happening as part of Canada’s National Housing Strategy, a $115 billion plan to boost affordability.  “In Toronto, the housing crisis is as severe as it’s ever been,” UT Daniels professor Keisha St. Louis-McBurnie, a Toronto-based urban planner at Monumental, told AN.  “We’ve seen real growth in housing encampments, especially during COVID-19,” St. Louis-McBurnie said. “There’s been very limited new transitional and supportive housing across [Toronto]. Households are getting priced out of the market, including professional middle-income ones. Folks who are low-income that require the most housing support are not able to access new affordable housing, especially in consideration to what’s getting built in Toronto.” A Brutalist housing co-op on Eglinton Avenue in Toronto (Ken Lund/Flickr/CC BY 2.0) Claire Weisz’s office, WXY, as of this year has locations in New York and Toronto. Weisz recently spoke at the Canadian Club Toronto, in a round table moderated by Alex Bozikovic, about urbanism. “Huge troves of affordable housing in New York has, in recent years, been taken from people who can’t afford down payments on co-ops,” Weisz told AN. “We’ve sacrificed so much. Some organizations have tried to stop this, but without policy support from the city, it’s really in vain.” “My big worry is that right now, like Toronto, New York is starting to be like the rest of the U.S. and rely on developer-led for-profits, versus not-for-profits,” Weisz added. “There needs to be a reawakening of not-for-profit development coalitions.” “The Co-operative Housing Sector is Booming” The Canadian National Housing Strategy’s longterm goal is to build 156,000 affordable units and repair over 298,000 existing ones. Housing cooperatives are getting built all over Canada as part of the program, from British Columbia, Ontario, and Nova Scotia. Planning departments are prioritizing the needs of First Nations communities and Black Canadians to help rectify past injustices. This is happening as rent prices skyrocket, and Toronto’s skyline is populated with new landmarks by Frank Gehry, Studio Gang, BIG, and others. Cooperative housing was first built in Canada in the 1930s. Regent Park in Toronto was the country’s first public housing campus, finished in 1949. This legacy continued through the 1960s and ’70s, when radical co-ops like Rochdale College and Neill-Wycik were built for University of Toronto students. Willow Park Housing Co-op (1966) went up in Winnipeg thanks to CHF Canada, a joint initiative by the Canadian Labour Congress and the Co-operative Union of Canada. The New Democratic Party (NDP) constructed abundant cooperative housing in Vancouver. Milton Park got built in Montreal in the 1980s. Between 1973 and 1993, CHF Canada built a total 92,000 cooperatively-owned units. (This history was captured by Leslie Coles in Under Construction: A History of Co-operative Housing in Canada.) All this momentum was brought to a halt during successive Brian Mulroney and Jean Chrétien Premierships, however, when government support for supportive housing was cut, much like what was happening in the U.S. at that time under the Clinton administration with the Faircloth Amendment. Regent Park’s original architecture was demolished in 2005 as part of the Regent Park Revitalization Plan, and replaced with a private, mixed-income community. (Kevin Costain/Wikimedia Commons /CC BY 2.0) A regime of state-imposed austerity ensued, leading up to the affordability crisis both Canada and the U.S. have today. Unlike the United States, however, Canada seems to have learned from its past mistakes. Thanks to Canada’s Co-operative Housing Development Program, eight co-ops are getting built right now. Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow has prioritized new affordable housing construction and land trusts, and is doing much to fight gentrification. BC Builds is an initiative helping fast track cooperative housing in Vancouver City Council. “Since the 1990s there’s been a shift in liberal to conservative and neoliberal federal governments,” St. Louis-McBurnie said. “This resulted in reduced public investment in significant social programs, including public and not-for-profit housing. These successive governments devolved responsibility for funding affordable housing to provincial governments across the country, Ontario in particular. Places like Regent Park now have a public-private partnership model, meaning it’s now on the private market. Alexandra Park is going through a similar privatization process.” “But now, there’s interest in alternatives” to market rate development St. Louis-McBurnie affirmed, “and the co-operative housing sector is booming.” Provinces and cities are also implementing “communal land trust models to support the scaling and retaining of assets,” she said. “They’re trying to figure out ways for bringing independently-owned co-ops into the land trust model.” Housing as Human Right The largest co-op underway in Canada today is 2444 Eglinton Avenue by Henriquez Partners and Claude Cormier + Associés. The Toronto development will yield 918 homes, including 612 affordable, rent-geared-to-income (RGI) units. Retail offerings will be sited at the base level. From afar, 2444 Eglinton Avenue will stand out thanks to its polychromatic porthole windows. Further afield in Perth, Ontario, 38 new cooperative units will be built. Farther east in Upper Hammonds Plains, Nova Scotia, a co-operative housing development will yield 136 row house units primarily for Black Canadians. That project is happening through a partnership between the Upper Hammonds Plains Community Land Trust and the Upper Hammonds Plains Housing Co-operative. Curtis Whiley, a sixth-generation African Nova Scotian, is steering the housing cooperative project in Upper Hammonds. Meanwhile in New Minas, Nova Scotia, there will be 32 more cooperative homes. Rendering of 2444 Eglinton Avenue Co-ops (Courtesy Henriquez Partners) Africville was a close-knit Black community in Halifax located on Treat 1 territory destroyed by the City of Halifax in the 1960s. Today, land trusts like the one in Nova Scotia are effective means for establishing housing secure communities of color. The Toronto Chinatown Land Trust likewise empowers people to stay in place, an outfit helmed by Chiyi Tam who is a planner and UT Daniels faculty member. “We have not seen any investment like this, I would say, in terms of housing development almost exclusively for Black communities in Canada’s history,” St. Louis-McBurnie said. Hogan’s Alley’s Black community was displaced by the Vancouver government to make way for the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts in 1971. Now, members of the NDP and Hogan’s Alley Society—a Black-led, not-for-profit developer of Afrocentric affordable housing—are working together to shore up Black land stewardship in the old neighborhood and help rectify the past injustice. “Transferring land over to the Hogan Alley land trust will allow for the Black community to return and for greater autonomy in housing construction,” St. Louis-McBurnie added. “What If We Built a New Co-op City in Brooklyn?” Federal spending was allocated in the Biden administration’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, or the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, to dismantle highways that ripped through inner cities and destroyed African American neighborhoods, like I-81 in Syracuse, New York. But this week, House GOP members moved to cancel the I-81 highway removal project. The Trump administration’s proposed 2026 national budget has slashed spending on projects that “fall outside [the President’s] new priorities” and “promote radical equity policies,” the White House said. Is it possible for architects, politicians, and planners in the U.S. to replicate Canada’s success given the current political climate?  It seems, for now, it would have to happen with aggressive leadership at the city and state levels—trade unions and nonprofits would also have to step up. This is already taking place, for instance, at Penn South, a sprawling Mitchell-Lama housing cooperative in Manhattan by the United Housing Foundation (UHF). Today, Bernheimer Architecture (BA) and the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust are helping upgrade the handsome midcentury campus. Penn South’s rehabilitation is in conjunction with BA, the AFL-CIO, and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). “Penn South is a very unique campus, and its needs are different from most other campuses in New York City,” Andy Bernheimer told AN. “NYSERDA is helping us inform design and construction moving forward, which will entail reskinning the buildings and making them more energy efficient.” Co-op City is situated on a sprawling 320-acre site in the north Bronx. (Zara Pfeifer) Co-op City shopping plaza (Zara Pfeifer) In New York today, mayoral candidates are increasingly interested in revisiting the Mitchell-Lama Program’s success, a UHF campaign that built 135,000 cooperative housing units between 1955 and 1978, like Penn South and the Bronx’s Co-op City, another historic campus by Herman Jessor. In Albany, New York State elected officials have proposed a new Social Housing Development Authority, which would allocate government spending toward public housing, co-ops, and land trusts to battle gentrification. “I don’t think there’s enough money to simply restart a program like Mitchell-Lama, as far as I can tell,” Weisz told AN. “But if you look at all of the older Mitchell-Lamas flipping to the market, it’s clear we need to preserve the ones that are left, and there needs to be a new generation of co-ops. All over the city, when people have to pay market rates instead of mortgages, they’re rent burdened.” Homes for Living is a new book by Jonathan Tarleton that speaks to the tumultuous privatization of New York’s cooperative housing stock, a burgeoning problem. “Maybe there’s a way to build a funding and oversight mechanism for existing co-ops worried about going under water, and for households to sign up for a program that helps them to stay in [Mitchell-Lama],” Weisz elaborated. “Maybe there could even be a program for rental apartments to get into that program?” WXY is currently working on a Mitchell-Lama campus in the Bronx, Stevenson Commons, together with Habitat for Humanity. The goal is to maintain Stevenson Common’s affordability with rent-stabilized flats at very low rates. Parking lots at Stevenson Commons were rezoned to allow for new housing, which helps maintain affordability, while new public spaces and tennis clubs were added. There will be incentives to help seniors age in place, and for multigenerational households. Rochdale Village in Queens (Zara Pfeifer) Weisz sees opportunities to finance cooperative housing with ulterior means, like capital raised from Habitat for Humanity, but also congestion pricing. “We should be using new lines and TOD to actually support neighborhoods and co-ops, and people that are ultimately the ones who stay and support neighborhoods,” she said. “Why not subsidize co-op structures? The only way to do that is if there’s city-owned land, because, otherwise, the land cost is so expensive, you have to develop it at market rate.” “There’s a lot of city sites that have been identified for housing,” Weisz noted. “There’s all sorts of sites in the city’s hands right beside the Manhattan Bridge, for instance, or along the BQE. All of those sites could become new co-ops. What if we built a new Co-op City in Brooklyn?”