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.

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.

Selldorf Architects are to lead a renovation of the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris. Working in collaboration with Paris-based Studio La Boétie, Selldorf will perform upgrades to the historic mansion house where Yves Saint Laurent created iconic fashion pieces from 1974 to 2002. “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 said, announcing their commission. “A new Documentation and Research Center will be created to preserve and promote the archives and documents related to the lives and work of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé.” The commission comes weeks after the Selldorf-led overhaul of the National Gallery in London opened to the public. The renovations centered on the Sainsbury Wing, previously designed by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.

The institute confirmed it had appointed the heritage specialist, ranked 10th in last year’s AJ100 league table, to deliver the RIBA Stage 4 design on the project to overhaul its 66 Portland Place base. In February, Benedetti Architects finally submitted its revamp plans for the Grade II*-listed, 91-year-old, George Grey Wornum-designed building to Westminster City Council, three years after winning the original competition. The RIBA said the 10-strong Clerkenwell-based practice would remain as design guardians on the project, which could take up to three years to complete.Advertisement Benedetti was selected for the job in 2022 following an RIBA-run competition. Also shortlisted were David Kohn Architects, Belfast-based Hall McKnight, Roz Barr Architects, a collaboration between Freehaus with Donald Insall Associates, IDKHugh Broughton Architects, and a joint bid between Feix&Merlin with Haptic Architects & Heritage Architecture. News of Purcell's appointment comes as RIBA resumes its search for a temporary home. Earlier this week, it emerged that a proposed move to the nearby Royal College of Physicians offices had collapsed. But despite this setback and the fact Benedetti Architects' plans have not yet been approved, the institute still plans to shut its café and bookshop at the end of this month and close its doors to all staff by 29 August. The building is set to reopen in 2028 following its full refurbishment – a project that aims to improve the 1930s building’s accessibility. Speaking about the decision to bring Purcell on to the team, RIBA chair of board Jack Pringle said: ‘At the competition stage, RIBA was pleased to open the project to all architectural practices, including SMEs, to maximise the creative talent pool available to the institute. ‘We were delighted to appoint Benedetti Architects to that role, fresh from their triumph at BAFTA. Now, for Stage 4, we are pleased to retain Benedetti as our design guardian and to bring in the powerful team of Purcell with their in-depth knowledge of the renovation of historic buildings – not least the Palace of Westminster, the National Gallery in collaboration with Selldorf Architects, and Auckland Castle where they collaborated with Niall McLaughlin Architects.’Advertisement According to its last accounts for the year ending April 2024, Purcell had a turnover of £26.4 million and a workforce of nearly 290 staff. The submitted Benedetti scheme includes replacing the revolving glass door on the main entrance with a more accessible entrance for blind visitors, as well as less steep wheelchair ramps and new steps. A separate entrance on Weymouth Street will be introduced for a new café – replacing the current bookshop – with pavement seating to encourage public use of the building.  The bookshop will relocate to be more ‘public-facing’ towards Portland Place on the north-west corner of the ground floor. The main exhibition space will move upstairs, with the existing ground-floor gallery untouched. Source:Benedetti/RIBA The introduction of larger lifts aims to provide universal access to all of the building’s 28 levels, many of which can only currently be reached by stairs. A ‘generously sized’ entrance to the library, matching original Wornum features inside the building, will further increase accessibility.  The refurbishment also addresses inefficiencies in the plumbing and electrical systems, removing fossil-fuel-dependent systems to meet the RIBA and Westminster City Council's climate targets. Heritage single-glazed windows will be largely retained, with secondary glazing introduced elsewhere. Other aspects include restoring the Jarvis Foyer, a 400-seat hospitality space, and more display space for architectural models and drawings. Meanwhile, banners originally proposed for the entrance have been dropped on the advice of Westminster Council following a consultation last summer.  66 Portland Place was built in 1934 and has had piecemeal upgrades throughout its history, most recently in 2019 with the addition of a Hayhurst & Co-designed learning centre and a Carmody Groarke-designed gallery. The RIBA has previously said it would look to fundraising and sponsorship to pay for the House of Architecture and that ‘the funding strategy [was] not linked to member fees’. Meanwhile, the institute, having failed to secure temporary office space at the Royal College of Physicians in St Andrew’s Place, Regent’s Park, said it was now ‘exploring contingency plans to ensure suitable working arrangements for staff'. Source:Benedetti/RIBA Benedetti’s submitted RIBA House of Architecture refurbishment (February 2025)