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Article 66/3394Numéro meets up with star architect Rem Koolhaas on the occasion of the opening of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow.

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June 14th 2015Architecture

In 2008, Russian collector and philanthropist Dasha Zukhova founded the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, with a mission to bring Western contemporary art, previously little known in the country, to a wider Russian public. After initially opening in the Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage, designed by avant-garde architect Konstantin Melnikov in 1926, the museum moved to a temporary pavilion by Shigeru Ban, but has now just reopened in a brand-new permanent home: the Vremena Goda (four seasons) Pavilion in Gorky Park, renovated by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. He spoke to Numéro about this key project.

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Numéro: Can you tell us about your new Garage Museum in Moscow?

Rem Koolhaas: Dasha Zukhova’s cultural institution is very impressive, and in a crucial moment offered Moscow a very important place. It was originally in Melnikov’s Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage, but had to leave, and has now moved to Gorky Park, which is very beautiful and is also a key part of Moscow’s social life. The new pavilion was a 1960s Soviet restaurant, which had been abandoned for decades, and which we’ve converted into something new. So for me what was exciting was to focus on preservation, and I also have a longstanding interest in Russia and Russian architecture. Our thesis was that you can say many things about the Soviet period and Soviet culture, but buildings for public use were very generous and very welcoming. So we’ve tried to preserve that generosity and use it for a cultural institution. We wrapped the building in a new way, but tried to let the interior speak for itself. And we’re experimenting with a form of preservation where we also preserve to some extent the decay – the walls are kind of broken, and we’ve kept some of that.

Numéro : Comment avez-vous abordé cette rénovation architecturale ?

Rem Koolhaas : Il s’agissait ici avant tout de préserver une œuvre architecturale russe, qui est très intéressante. On peut dire et penser bien des choses au sujet de la période soviétique et de sa culture, mais le fait est que les bâtiments construits pour un usage public étaient très accueillants. Nous avons donc voulu préserver cette générosité, et la mettre à profit pour une institution culturelle. Nous avons changé son emballage, si j’ose dire, en laissant l’intérieur parler pour lui-même. La conservation de ce qui est historique est centrale dans ce genre de projet. Ici, nous expérimentons une nouvelle sorte de travail : nous avons cherché à préserver également l’état de délabrement du bâtiment. Certains murs sont très abîmés, et nous les laissons tels quels.

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Yayoi Kusama is one of the first artists invited. Infinity Mirrored Room, The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away, 2013.

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Numéro: Contemporary art varies greatly in its dimensions, from small objects or paintings to huge installation pieces. How did you deal with this?

Rem Koolhaas: We’ve been involved with many museums, and I think that one of the few really original things about our work is that we’ve been thinking about scale almost independently of any other issue. I did a book [S,M,L,XL, 1995] which is only about scale and not about content. You have to ask why artworks are getting bigger and bigger, and of course it has a direct connection with the economy and with America. So in a certain way, I think it’s important for architecture to give a kind of resistance to this endless expansion. When we took part in a competition for the Tate, the director warned us that artists don’t appreciate the pressure of architecture, and that their preferred environment today is the former industrial space with white walls. So that made me super sceptical, and from then on I started to wonder, “Should you really indulge this or not?”

By Delphine Roche

www.garageccc.com

www.oma.eu

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Yayoi Kusama, Dots Obsession, 2013.

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Katharina Grosse is one of the first artists invited. Inside the Speaker, 2014.

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Article 66/33113From the Mobile Art pavilion for Chanel to the Maxxi in Rome, Zaha Hadid has entirely reinvented museological space, and in doing so marked the 21st-century with a unique aesthetic that is completely her own.

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June 29th 2015Architecture

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Numéro met up with the Anglo-Iraqi architect to look back over a decade of artistic creation in cities across the globe– from Rome to Cincinnati, from Baku to Copenhagen – and to delve into the secrets of her inimitable approach.

Numéro: When you were studying at the Architectural Association in London, you said, “I’d like to open a door to a world that has yet to be invented.” Since that time you’ve invented a whole new typology of museums…

Zaha Hadid : Back then my professors pushed me to look at and then decipher what wasn’t obvious. That made, in a way, for a sort of teaching of “new frontiers”: there had to be another world, other formal possibilities. I was obsessed with the desire to continue and complete certain Modernist projects that had ended so abruptly with the Second World War. The 1970s and 80s were marked by historicism and rationalism, and I didn’t think back then that by pursuing my research I could discover “another world.” But being able to create my own repertoire was exciting and absolutely decisive – discovering and imagining techniques, inventing new formal qualities. I was studying a new subject, one that I was constructing as I defined it.

Which museum would you say has had the most influence on you?

The New York Guggenheim has had an incredible influence on me. Frank Lloyd Wright was a visionary, and created a path that connects the museum to the exterior and defines its circulation. The route through the building, on a vertical spiral, really allows you to see the works, to contemplate them in three dimensions and to rediscover them in a completely different way. With Wright, the museum becomes continuous, the starting point for a promenade. And the Guggenheim finally escaped from those enfilades of rectangular rooms, without perspective or depth, that characterized the aristocratic palace. He experimented with light and movement, allowing for the greatest possible number of people. Exhibitions can be hung in front of everyone: the museum comes to life, like a body in motion. In a similar vein, the Heydar-Aliyev Centre [Baku, 2007–12] frees itself from the straight wall. We removed as many visual cues as possible so that you float in an optical white world.

Do you think it’s fair to say that museums are becoming ever less elitist?

Some claim that museums have become shopping malls. I think it’s a good thing that they draw in more and more people. Today the interaction between culture and public life is fundamental. What differentiates the 20th and the 21st centuries from those that preceded them is that art no longer addresses the patrons alone. It’s become accessible to everyone, and with it the museum has been enriched.

Interview by Delphine Roche

Read the full story in Numéro 164, now in stands and available in our iPad app.

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Rosenthal Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati.

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MAXXI museum, Rome, Italy.

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Article 66/33302Paris’s Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine has inaugurated on November 11th, 2015 a major retrospective of Renzo Piano’s work. On this occasion Numéro spoke to him about the fundaments of his approach.

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November 16th 2015Architecture

The legendary Italian architect Renzo Piano, author, among others, of Paris’s Centre Pompidou (1971–77, with Richard Rogers), the Beyeler Foundation in Switzerland (1992–97), the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre in Nouméa (1991–98) and, more recently, London’s Shard (2000–12) and the brand-new Whitney Museum in New York (2007–15) is celebrated with an exhibition at Paris’s Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine.

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Numéro: Your exhibition at the Cité de l’Architecture is called La méthode Piano. Can you describe your method?

Renzo Piano: Everyone finds their professional path in a different way. For me it was through my family – my father, uncles and grandfather were all builders. So much so that, when I got interested in architecture, I thought it was simply a question of building. But I know a lot of other people
who came to architecture from an artistic approach, where the building is considered as a sculpture. In the end, the initial impetus doesn’t matter much, the important thing is to understand that architecture goes well beyond all that. Those who think it’s just about the beauty of space need to learn that it’s also about people, society, humanism and the art of building. Conversely, as a constructor, I had to learn that you can’t do without poetry and beauty. If you want to talk about my way of working – I never use the word “method” because I work organically – then I would say that I go quite naturally from one approach to another. At 9.00 am I’m something of a poet; at 10.00 more a builder; and at 11.00 rather a humanist, before becoming a poet again. There are other professions like that − film makers for example. I thought of them because I’m working on plans for a movie museum in Los Angeles, which meant that I met quite a few of them. Like us, they work in fragments, scene by scene, piece by piece. They share with us this art of assemblage. In fact it’s a bit like you’re creating a mosaic, spending half your time up close and the other half at a distance to have an overview of the whole thing − to check that the hand isn’t too big or the nose too small. Jean Prouvé, who I was lucky enough to know, told me that you don’t run a project, as people often think, by going from the general to the detailed. In truth, you go from the general to the detailed and then back from the detailed to the general in one and the same movement.

Your interest in light, lightness and materials is a constant in your work. Does this add up to a style?

I would call it a coherence. An integrity. It’s true that among the axes of my work there’s light. It’s always present. Right at the beginning of my career, I carried out experiments with my father and my brother. Among the things I’ve always been curious about, lightness does indeed have an important place. Why lightness? Because it interests me more than heaviness. Lightness is the art of taking away. It goes together with transparency... and with light, once again. I think it must have something to do with the fact that I was born in Genoa, on the Mediterranean. This childhood imaginary is a sort of quarry I dig into without realizing it.

How do you find the right balance between responsibility and disobedience?

You have to be a good listener. And for that, you need to understand that the people who have the most interesting things to say are often those who keep quiet. Don’t listen to those who shout, listen to the minorities who don’t express themselves. Ten years ago, when we began the enlargement project at the Columbia campus in Harlem, I spent a lot of time there. I spoke to the Hispanic and Afro-American communities who make up the majority of the local population. I listened to those who were the most softly spoken. And I understood that it was important for the building to float, that it should be lifted up so that the ground floor would remain an open, public space. This was a response to a strong desire on the part of the local population – their desire to live together and a share a common space.

Renzo Piano Building Workshop – La méthode Piano,

11 November 2015 to 29 February 2016 at the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris.

www.citechaillot.fr.

Interview by Thibaut Wychowanok.

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The Shard – London Bridge Tower, in London. This piece of architecture as made by Renzo Piano Building Workshop from 2000 to 2012. Photo Chris Martin.

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Photo Stéphane Gallois.

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Article 66/33366Paris’s Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine has inaugurated on November a major retrospective of Renzo Piano’s work. On this occasion Numéro spoke to him about the fundaments of his approach.

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January 02nd 2016Architecture

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Numéro: Your exhibition at the Cité de l’Architecture is called La méthode Piano. Can you describe your method?

Renzo Piano: Everyone finds their professional path in a different way. For me it was through my family – my father, uncles and grandfather were all builders. So much so that, when I got interested in architecture, I thought it was simply a question of building. But I know a lot of other people
came to architecture from an artistic approach, where the building is considered as a sculpture. In the end, the initial impetus doesn’t matter much, the important thing is to understand that architecture goes well beyond all that. Those who think it’s just about the beauty of space need to learn that it’s also about people, society, humanism and the art of building. Conversely, as a constructor, I had to learn that you can’t do without poetry and beauty. If you want to talk about my way of working – I never use the word “method” because I work organically – then I would say that I go quite naturally from one approach to another. At 9.00 am I’m something of a poet; at 10.00 more a builder; and at 11.00 rather a humanist, before becoming a poet again. There are other professions like that − film makers for example. I thought of them because I’m working on plans for a movie museum in Los Angeles, which means that I met quite a few of them. Like us, they work in fragments, scene by scene, piece by piece. They share with us this art of assemblage. In fact it’s a bit like you’re creating a mosaic, spending half your time up close and the other half at a distance, in order to have an overview of the whole thing − to check that the hand isn’t too big or the nose too small. Jean Prouvé, who I was lucky enough to know, told me that you don’t run a project, as people often think, by going from the general to the detailed. In truth, you go from the general to the detailed and then back from the detailed to the general in one and the same movement.

Your interest in light, lightness and materials is a constant in your work. Does this add up to a style?

I would call it a coherence. An integrity. It’s true that among the axes of my work there’s light. It’s always present. Right at the beginning of my career, I carried out experiments with my father and my brother. Among the things I’ve always been curious about, lightness does indeed have an important place. Why lightness? Because it interests me more than heaviness. Lightness is the art of taking away. It goes together with transparency... and with light, once again. I think it must have something to do with the fact that I was born in Genoa, on the Mediterranean. This imaginary childhood is a sort of quarry I dig into without realizing it.

How do you find the right balance between responsibility and disobedience?

You have to be a good listener. And for that, you need to understand that the people who have the most interesting things to say are often those who keep quiet. Don’t listen to those who shout, listen to the minorities who don’t express themselves. Ten years ago, when we began the enlargement project at the Columbia campus in Harlem, I spent a lot of time there. I spoke to the Hispanic and Afro-American communities who make up the majority of the local population. I listened to those who were the most discreet. And I understood that it was important for the building to float, that it should be lifted up so that the ground floor would remain an open, public space. This was a response to a strong desire on the part of the local population – their desire to live together and a share a common space.

Renzo Piano Building Workshop – La méthode Piano,

11 November 2015 to 29 February 2016 at the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris.

www.citechaillot.fr.

Interview by Thibaut Wychowanok.

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Galerie simple431The two leading figures of French architecture come back to Galerie Azzedine Alaïa with 8 of their incredible projects for museums, none of which have been completed so far.

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GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM OF GUADALAJARA, Guadalajara, Mexico, Jean Nouvel.

Credits : Ateliers Jean Nouvel/ArtefactoryLab

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View from the exhibition "Musées à venir", Jean Nouvel and Claude Parent at Galerie Azzedine Alaïa.

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MUSÉE D'ART MODERNE OBLIQUE (1972), Claude Parent.

Original phtographs from Michel‐Charles Gaffier. Taken up by Dennis Bouchard

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View from the exhibition "Musées à venir", Jean Nouvel and Claude Parent at Galerie Azzedine Alaïa.

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LE NOUVEAU MUSÉE (2014-2015), Claude Parent.

Credits : Dennis Bouchard

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CENTRE INTERNATIONAL DE L’ART PARIETAL LASCAUX IV, Lascaux, France (concours 2012), Jean Nouvel.

Credits : Ateliers Jean Nouvel

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PROJET DE PLATEAU BEAUBOURG (1971), reviewed in 2015

Credits : Dennis Bouchard

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View from the exhibition "Musées à venir", Jean Nouvel and Claude Parent at Galerie Azzedine Alaïa.

Exhibition "Musées à venir", Jean Nouvel and Claude Parent, Galerie Azzedine Alaïa, 18 rue de la Verrerie, Paris 4e. Until February 28th, from 11am to 7pm everyday.

February 01st 2016Architecture

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Article 50/50642The immense architect Zaha Hadid has left us. Numéro pays her tribute by publishing her last interview with the magazine.

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April 01st 2016Architecture

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Zaha Hadid: Back then my professors pushed me to look at and then decipher what wasn’t obvious. That made, in a way, for a sort of teaching of “new frontiers”: there had to be another world, other formal possibilities. I was obsessed with the desire to continue and complete certain Modernist projects that had ended so abruptly with the Second World War. The 1970s and 80s were marked by historicism and rationalism, and I didn’t think back then that by pursuing my research I could discover “another world.” But being able to create my own repertoire was exciting and absolutely decisive – discovering and imagining techniques, inventing new formal qualities. I was studying a new subject, one that I was constructing as I defined it.

Which museum would you say has had the most influence on you?

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Photo: Hélène Binet.

Rosenthal Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati.

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At the Architectural Association, we were always made to question categories, to look for new ways. What if architecture had no front or back? Or no doors, no rooms and no ceremony? It’s at this moment that the freedom to invent new spaces emerges.

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Networked, transportable, pop-up, vertical… The museums you’ve designed are all very different from one another. Do you deliberately seek to free yourself from all previous museum typologies?

Addressing the museum as an object doesn’t strike me as being the right approach. On the contrary, you have to step away from the object to enter into the field. The museum is a field of exploration: it must delimit a landscape. You have to transgress the categories. The MAXXI [Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo, Rome, 1998–2009] is made up of layers and converging lines. It’s an “open” museum which plays on the idea of networks, of connection-disconnection. It multiplies the visitor pathways and the routes through it. You have to defy this obsession with typology. The Modernists attacked it, and then architects recreated a new form of typology. At the Architectural Association, we were always made to question categories, to look for new ways. What if architecture had no front or back? Or no doors, no rooms and no ceremony? It’s at this moment that the freedom to invent new spaces emerges.

Long before the Guggenheim Bilbao, you’d been struck by an extraordinary event…

I still remember the emotion I felt when I first saw the Reichstag in Berlin being wrapped by Christo: thousands of people were singing and dancing, they flocked to see the building being wrapped up. They came in droves because it was such a strange idea. That day I fully understood for the first time that the world is fascinated by fantastic projects. That installation was a unique event, and a critical one from a historical perspective: the crowds weren’t just drawn by the idea of wrapping an object but were also interested in the creative process. They were totally entranced by Christo’s ability to create something completely new out of such a familiar building. I think that before that day, very few of those present had thought it was actually
possible to create fantastic things.

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The MAXXI, Rome.

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Connecting the museum to the urban fabric was one of your first credos.

In Cincinnati [the Rosenthal Centre, 2003], I was obsessed with the idea of aggregations and swarms. But in opposition to that, I also wanted the floor to be transparent to indicate that the museum is a public building. I wanted the urban fabric to penetrate it freely, I wanted the circulation of people and ideas to occur free of obstacles. The transparent base created a contrast with the mass of concrete volumes rising upwards. At first sight, the building seems to defy the laws of gravity because heavy volumes are placed on top of a glass base which appears fragile – for this project the spatial restrictions were very real and the museum had to be integrated vertically. For the visitor, the transparent path goes upwards, because on each floor the building opens up to the city, reconnecting with the urban environment. The city is invited inside the museum, where it becomes a protagonist.

From the angular lines of the Rosenthal Center to the fluid forms of the Chanel exhibition pavilion or the Heydar-Aliyev Centre, what has driven the evolution of your architecture over the last ten years?

My drawings and sources of inspiration have evolved over the years. I started with landscapes and topography, which greatly influenced, for example, the Ordrupgaard Museum extension [Copenhagen, 2001–05]. Then it was rivers and liquid elements that inspired me, which afterwards took the form of deserts and dunes, like at the Heydar-Aliyev Centre or the renovation/extension at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery [London, 2009–13]. Currently I’m fascinated by floral arrangements and underwater species – their forms are more organic, softer. But none of this could have happened without the development of software technology. Computer programmes have evolved so much over the past decade that it allows us to explore continuously.

Do you think it’s fair to say that museums are becoming ever less elitist?

Interview by Clara Le Fort

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Photo: Virgile Simon Bertrand.

Mobile Art, Hong Kong.

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Photo : Hufton + Crow. The Broad Art Museum.

From theMobile Art pavilion for Chanel to the Maxxi in Rome, Zaha Hadid has entirely reinvented museological space, and in doing so marked the 21st-century with a unique aesthetic that is completely her own. Numéro met up with the Anglo-Iraqi architect to look back over a decade of artistic creation in cities across the globe – from Rome to Cincinnati, from Baku to Copenhagen – and to delve into the secrets of her inimitable approach.

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Article 66/33699A grandiose gesture designed by Herzog & de Meuron, the Elbe Philharmonic Hall is soon to open its doors. The tallest inhabited building in Hamburg, its 110 meters soar majestically over the River Elbe.

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April 27th 2016Architecture

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Photo: Frans van der Heijden.

The Philharmonic will finally open at the beginning of 2017. This pharaonic project by the Swiss architects responsible for the Tate Modern in London, is organised around concert halls, public spaces and a hotel. It sits atop an old brick warehouse on the docks, on UNESCO’s World Heritage List. But it’s the shimmering façade that catches the gaze and stirs desire. It reigns majestically over the river like a glass island. Since the first sketches were released at the turn of the 21st century, much has been said and written about this ambitious enterprise, as well as its mounting costs and delays. But still more secrets surround the Elbphilharmonie.

During a private visit organised by the German entrepreneur Frank Gerhard Schmidt, another side to this building is revealed. While the main concert hall – still being built – is fascinating with its honeycomb structures giving the impression of being within a colossal beehive, the real surprise comes with the penthouses and private apartments, unveiled for the first time. They offer breath-taking views over Herzog & de Meuron's splendid architecture, the sinuous forms of their œuvre and the facade composed of 1100 glass elements. From the 11th to the top floor, there's a unique panorama over the river and the town's impressive churches. Facing the urban sprawl of Hamburg, the building is airy and organic. "Living within an architectural masterpiece, in the heart of a Philharmonic even, is a unique experience," explains Kate Hume, the celebrated interior designer who's been working on the project for the last year. "We're addressing music lovers, but also those seeking somewhere calm with big skies, or an ideal place to hang works of art or design, the views of which will evolve throughout the day, as the sun moves, finishing its trajectory opposite the apartments in a magical display." The windows stretch over 30 meters rendering these gem-like abodes veritable nests in the sky. A contemporary Olympus for music-loving gods...

By Thibaut Wychowanok

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Article 50/50777Behind its immaculate façade that seems to have been shaped by a breath of wind, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has completely reinvented itself. Now opened up to the city, its rebirth was overseen by Norwegian architects Snøhetta.

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June 02nd 2016Architecture

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It’s the fruit of a long-term vision and political will to transform the SoMA neighbourhood – “South of Market,” a district of former industrial warehouses – into a new cultural centre. A fortress of bricks built by Swiss architect Mario Botta in 1995, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) was isolated and disconnected from the city. Some even said it turned its back on the town, and passers-by walked alongside it without noticing the building or going in. Twenty years on, SFMOMA has cut loose and is now the biggest space dedicated to modern art in the entire United States. Founded in 1935, it contains exceptional holdings, including the Doris and Donald Fisher collection and the world’s most extensive collection of American photography, which now has its own space known as The Pritzker Center for Photography. The revamped building – the work of visionary Norwegian firm Snøhetta, who built the Oslo Opera House, the entrance pavilion to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York, and who are currently working on the Le Monde building in Paris – is organized vertically, like a new figurehead for the city.

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Photos: Henrik Kam.

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“We opened the museum onto the neighbourhood. We cut openings all over it to bring the public into the heart of the building. I like to say that in a certain way we ‘turned the zoo upside down’: by giving the building a transparent base, like a huge exhibition gallery in glass, there’ll always be something to see, an installation to discover, even for simple passers-by. The new SFMOMA has become an integral part of the urban fabric,” exclaims Kjetil Thorsen, one of Snøhetta’s founders.

When the firm won the international design competition in 2010, it was precisely because they’d come up with a concept that was open onto the city, generous, and accessible to everyone. To make this vision reality, SFMOMA had bought up a fire station and an office building just behind the old museum building, so that they owned a whole chunk of land, ramified around a network of little streets and alleys, where they could intensify their presence. The imposing vertical vessel that is the new SFMOMA adds almost 22,000 square metres of extra floor space divided up into internal galleries and outside spaces. “The bigger a museum is, the more it wearies and tires people,” explains Lara Kaufman, the project architect. “So we had to create diversity, invite nature into the heart of the structure, get the city to take part. To open up the old museum, first we brought in light. Then we brought the main visitor entrance closer and maximized the number of free galleries.” With Snøhetta, the word “gallery” takes on a new dimension in this building, where works offer themselves up directly to the city. An immense sculpture by Richard Serra is visible from the street, becoming a participant in the neighbourhood both day and night. Piled on top of each other vertically, the different exhibition spaces house distinct worlds, prolonged by terraces and sculpture gardens.

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Photos: Henrik Kam.

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An immense white sail, the façade seems as though modelled by the sea winds. Mimicking the effects of fog and the changing light typical of San Francisco Bay, the immaculate elevation seems to be in perpetual movement, as though it were malleable. Creating links and encouraging communication between spaces were the leitmotifs of the project.

“To mark the junction between the Fishers’ collection of modern art and the space devoted to 20th-century photographyon the third floor, we designed an external staircase, like a little pause before passing into a different world. Hugging the façade, it allows you to reconnect with the city and its panorama, becoming a space of its own. This staircase is in the image of San Francisco’s topography: it reveals different views with each step you climb !”, adds Kaufman. Almost like a rite of passage, it is where the visitor leaves the galleries to take the air, rediscover the city and escape for a brief moment before plunging back into all the richness of the collections.

By Clara Le Fort

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Photos: Henrik Kam.

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Article 50/50779A year of creative collaboration and one-on-one mentoring between young talents and undisputed masters… This is the notion behind the “Mentor and Protégé” program established by Rolex in 2002. For 2016 David Chipperfield is accompanying Simon Kretz.

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June 02nd 2016Architecture

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FROM ALEJANDRO GONZÁLEZ IÑÁRRITU (THE REVENANT) TO OLAFUR ELIASSON

Alejandro González Iñárritu and Tom Shoval, Martin Scorsese and Celina Murga, Brian Eno and Bren Frost, William Forsythe and Sang Jijia, Olafur Eliasson and Sammy Baloji… the list of “mentors” and “protégés” brought together by Rolex since 2002 is nothing short of stellar. Beyond the basic name-dropping, the year-long union between these established artists and their gifted disciples is above all an extraordinary adventure in humanity. An expression so over-used that we try not to use it. And yet here, with this artistic mentoring, it is very real.

TRANSMITTING ONE GENERATION’S KNOWLEDGE TO THE NEXT

Based on a simple yet brilliant idea, the “Mentor and Protégé” program brings together young talent and undisputed stars of different artistic disciplines (art, music, theatre, cinema, literature, architecture and dance) in an invitation to share. “We ask nothing of our participants,” Rolex explain, “Just that they spend time together and share their knowledge and experiences. This time is clearly of an essential value in our eyes. We know what a wealth it represents, because it leads to so much sharing and exchange.”

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Sammy Baloji and Olafur Eliasson photographed at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin.

©Rolex/Tomas Bertelsen

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TWO MONTHS ON MARTIN SCORSESE’S SHUTTER ISLAND SET

Thus in 2008 and 2009 Argentinian film maker Celina Murga spent two months on the set of Shutter Island in the company of Martin Scorsese. The American movie-making legend even gave her advice for her film The Third Side of the River, before ending up executive producer. “We’re convinced that hiding behind every great artist is another great artist,” the Swiss watch brand adds humbly.

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Celina Murga and Martin Scorsese on the set of Shutter Island during the Rolex mentoring in 2008.

©Brigitte Lacombe for Rolex

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RETHINKING THE CITY TOGETHER

For 2016 Sir David Chipperfield, an internationally renowned Brit, is joining forces with young Swiss architect Simon Kretz. Announced this weekend at the opening of the Architecture Biennale, of which Rolex is the main partner, this mentoring has been initiated under the best auspices, that of a very concrete and pragmatic reflection on urban spaces. “What else can the architect and architecture do for the city? Will an urban project still have the capacity to change the function and way we live? These are the questions Simon Kretz and I will be attempting to answer,” explained Sir David Chipperfield.

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View of Sir David Chipperfield’s London studio.

©Rolex/Tina Ruisinger

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A YEAR OF CREATIVE EXCHANGE FOR CONCRETE SOLUTIONS

The architect is planning to focus on existing sites and to question alongside his “protégé” how they could be conceived better. “The problem today is that urban projects are never considered in a global manner. All decisions are disconnected: the buildings aren’t conceived by those who design the surrounding spaces or the transport networks. A link has to be re-established between these different domains to give meaning back to the city. This exercise should lead to practical solutions that I plan to apply to more than one site. I’m thinking of the Spanish coast for example…” Sir Chipperfield continued. Watch this space.

An interview with Sir David Chipperfield is coming soon to Numero.com as well as a focus on the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale.

rolexmentorprotege.com, davidchipperfield.co.uk, salewski-kretz.ch

By Thibaut Wychowanok

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Model of a project by Simon Kretz in Zurich.

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Sir David Chipperfield and Simon Kretz at the press conference organised by Rolex in Venice, for the opening of the 2016 Architecture Biennale.

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Galerie simple806Every summer the Serpentine Gallery in London invites an architect to build a temporary structure to host its “Park Nights”. For the fourth year running they’ve been sponsored by COS, who for this occasion have created two limited edition t-shirts…

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Serpentine Pavillion 2016, by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG).

Cult exhibition spaces dedicated to contemporary art and co-directed by the one-of-a-kind Hans-Ulrich Obrist, the Serpentine has a setting that would make any museum on the planet green with envy - in the very heart of Kensington Gardens in Hyde Park, London. A five minute stroll from one to the other, the Serpentine Gallery and the Serpentine Sackler Gallery - whose extension was built by Zaha Hadid Architects in 2013 – are linked by one of the bridges over the Serpentine Lake, to whom they owe their name.

Every year since 2000, the Serpentine Gallery has commissioned a pop-up pavilion for the duration of the summer, from June to September, built in six months and conceived by an eminent architect. Open to the public and located on the lawns of the Serpentine, the Serpentine Pavilion hosts Park Nights. The event regroups all sorts of artistic projects and installations, bringing the venue to life. Here performances, dance, poetry, music, film and literature come together with the architecture offering a new perspective on the arts. For summer 2016 the Serpentine Pavilion, designed by theBjarke Ingels Group (BIG), is welcoming live performances that focus on the themes of story-telling, ritual and revolt. Among others there'll be artists Camille Henrot (discussing story-telling), Brian Belott (looking at the Dada movement) and Jala Wahid (talking about love).

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Serpentine Pavillion 2016, by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG).

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For the fourth consecutive year, COS is collaborating with the event and sponsoring the Park Nights program. According to Marie Honda, brand director, the Serpentine Gallery "is always a great source of inspiration for COS." For the launch of this project, COS created two limited edition t-shirts (one for men and one for women). A classic revisited in the spirit of this year's Park Nights - with a loose cut for the girls and rolled up sleeves for the boys - available in marl grey cotton, this future collector's item will be available from July 12th in the Serpentine Gallery as well as on the brand's own website. Profit from the sales will go to the Serpentine Trust allowing the two galleries to offer free entry as well as the chance to provide more and more educative, community and public projects within its walls. Fashion serving a good cause. We like it.

Park Nights 2016, at the Serpentine Gallery,

Kensington Gardens, London, W2 3XA,

From June 7th to September 23rd 2016

By Clara Blanca

Check out our tribute to Zaha Hadid.

Check out our interview with the immense Zaha Hadid.

Check out our private visit of the Elbe Philharmonic Hall of Hamburg.

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Park Night 1 : Prelude, On Architecture, Serpentine Architecture Programme Conversations, 2016. Serpentine Pavilion architect Bjarke Ingels and Summer House architects Kunlé Adeyemi, Barkow Leibinger, Yona Friedman and Asif Khan discuss their designs for the 2016 commissions in a series of panels with Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist. Wednesday 8th June at noon, Serpentine Gallery, London.

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Park Night 7 : On Love, by Jala Wahid. Artist Jala Wahid brings together existing music, personal and collective histories, as well as her practice as a sculptor and film-maker, in an evening exploring collective affect, longing and love. Friday 16th September at 8pm, Serpentine Gallery, London.

June 16th 2016Fashion

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Galerie simple819The spectacular extension of the London museum inaugurated on June 17th is the brainchild of architectural superstars Herzog & de Meuron. An impressive cultural cathedral crafted from concrete and brick… Numéro took a guided tour.

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It’s 1995. The Swiss architect duo Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron have won the competition to turn the disaffected power station designed by Giles Gilbert Scott into a great museum of modern and contemporary art for London. No one could have anticipated the success of what would become one of the greatest global institutions: The Tate Modern. Cynics ridiculed the goal of 1.8 million visitors a year. In the first year of its opening in 2000 there were 4.7 million. Today more than 5 million visit it annually. In 2000 Herzog and de Meuron were awarded the prestigious Pritzker Prize, the architect’s Nobel.

A CATHEDRAL FOR ART

The extension of the museum opened to the public on June 17thwas also conceived by the famous Basel duo’s agency. Since the Tate Modern, Herzog & de Meuron have multiplied their museum projects and become nothing short of an international reference. The San Francisco De Young Museum, the extension of the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, the Pérez Art Museum in Miami, the extension of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Schaulager in Basel, the Blau Museum in Barcelona… In other words their comeback on the banks of the River Thames has been hotly anticipated. And is anyone disappointed?

“This building that was once upon a time the beating heart of London is today its cultural cathedral.” Lord Browne, Chairman of the Tate

Not if we listen to the Tate chairman, Lord Browne. “This building that used to be the beating heart of London is today its cultural cathedral,” he enthusiastically announced before a crowd of guests at last Tuesday’s official opening. But the 64.5m tall tower with its 10 storeys doesn’t only have fans. “Too depressing!” Some say of its façade and choice of bricks – 336,000 for its openwork façade anchoring the building in an industrial past. “A veritable bunker!” A reference to its compact structure and deliberate choice to abandon the large glass entrances, an easy symbols of modernity for so many contemporary edifices. And yet what a success!

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Photo: Numéro

THE NEW TATE MODERN, BETWEEN STAR WARS AND BLADE RUNNER

Far from being a compacted bunker,the new wing is more like the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Its majesty evokes spiritual and religious monuments. Reaching into the sky, the building recalls the Tower of Babel, embodying a human culture determined to confront the gods. Or maybe a new Inca or Greek temple. It’s certainly an edifice to the glory of Art, the new contemporary idol. But these backward looking references don’t truly do this one-of-a-kind architectural object justice. A crooked object that seems to be in perpetual motion as if under the impetus of high-tech electronic mechanics transforming its appearance like a Rubik’s Cube. The imagination convened on this site is pure science fiction. The new Tate Modern is a spaceship from the Star Wars Empire. Better than that, a building straight out Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.

“The exterior shape of the building is as mysterious as it is confusing.” Architect Jacques Herzog

At night fall the interior light escapes through the pierced façade accentuating our impression of being faced with an intergalactic cruiser. For Jacques Herzog, “The exterior shape of the building is as mysterious as it is confusing and yet it results from a very rational geometric interpretation of the surrounding streets in the neighbourhood. The arising volumes remind us of a pyramid, but also a tent. It’s open to interpretation.”

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A CONSISTENT CHOICE: TWO WINGS FOR ONE BUILDING

“Our goal was to conceive a new building that fits in perfectly with the existing one,” continues Jacques Herzog. “We wanted to create a single entity where you cannot distinguish phase 1 from phase 2.” For this the choice of brick was primordial in order for the architects to create a sense of continuity in the façade of the two wings.“The brick coating can be read in two ways. Solid and traditional, it blends in with the existing bricks of the power station [that form the original Tate Modern]. And yet it appears particularly light, almost like a textile or a knit, especially on the inclined parts.” A bridge overlooking the gigantic hall works on linking the interior, the wing originally known as the “Boiler House” to the new wing called “Switch House”.

“The brick facade is perforated in such a way that the sun can enter and soften the strength of the concrete.” Jacques Herzog

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The tanks, spaces of 30m installed in the basement, welcome a fantastic line-up of performances and films.

ART IN THE MIDST OF FUEL TANKS

Another daring choice of duo is the erection of the new wing on the existing fuel tanks – the very ones that were used to power the turbines of the Tate’s monumental hall. These tanks, spaces of 30m installed in the basement, remind us of the industrial origins of the building. But now their concrete architecture is welcoming a fantastic line-up of performances and films, from the dreamy videos by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Palme d’or in Cannes) to the eccentric instruments of Tarek Atoui.

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60% MORE SPACE… not necessarily devoted to art

While the new wing allows the museum to increase its floor space by 60%,this gain is only partially set aside for exhibition space. Only levels 2 to 4 will be hosting the three inaugural exhibitions. The first - and most exciting - entitled “Between Object & Architecture” (level 2) looks at the relationship between the work of art and its surrounding environment. Donald Judd, Rachel Whiteread, Daniel Buren, Cristina Iglesias, Eva Hesse, Rasheed Araeen, Bruce Nauman and Ricardo Basbaum have all been summoned. On level 3, “Performer and Participant” closely scrutinises the links between art, performance and choreography, while level 4 gives over an impressive space to Louise Bourgeois and a space that’s much too small to the urban theme of “Living Cities”. The rest of the space is sucked up into a bar and boutique on level 1, with eight gigantic elevators on every floor, staircases and toilets everywhere, and a restaurant on level 9.

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AN ARCHITECTURAL PROMENADE BETWEEN WOOD AND CONCRETE

This new wing in brut concrete and pale oak wood provides vast and open volumes that are particularly interesting on level 2. It’s interestingly different from one floor to the next. “The brick façade is perforated in such a way that the sun can enter and soften the strength of the concrete,” comments Jacques Herzog. “The biggest difference with the old building is the flux management. Within the new wing the public will have access to a wide selection of stairs and railings that create a sort of architectural promenade with benches and alcoves where you can stop and chat.”

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800 WORKS BY 300 ARTISTS FROM 50 DIFFERENT COUNTRIES

The other major revolution at the new Tate Modern– and we’ll be going back to this in more detail soon – is obviously the new installation in the heart of the two wings. “Now we’re able to tell a more international, more diverse and more stimulating history of art,” explains Nicolas Serota, director of the Tate. “We wanted to trace the history of living arts, from cinema to new media, and above all acquire and show more work by womenartists.”

The end of the Western, white male artist hegemony... The new installation is resolutely more interesting, more feminine and more diverse in its choice of media. Performance takes pride of place. Video is also very present. Of the 800 works, 75% of them have been acquired since 2000. The 300 artists on show come from 50 different countries including Chili, India, Russia, Sudan, Lebanon and Thailand… It’s an undeniable success. And let’s not forget the Tate Modern’s iconic masterpieces – the Richter, Rothko and Riley rooms cannot help but move you to tears.

On the top floor of this new wing, at more than 60 meters high, the visitor can contemplate 360° of a constantly changing London, – the cranes are countless – its most beautiful buildings (from Saint Paul’s Cathedral to Renzo Piano’s Shard) and its stormy sky. An exhilarating view offered by the Tate Modern that perfectly symbolises its architectural and artistic ambition: to stay at the top.

www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern

By Thibaut Wychowanok

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June 21st 2016Architecture

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Article 50/50656Norwegian architecture firm JVA designs buildings that are in osmosis with the surrounding landscape. In response to the demands imposed by wind, snow, altitude or endless horizons, they invent new typologies that are magnified by the natural elements.

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December 07th 2016Architecture

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An angular structure that braves the ice of Spitsbergen, a writers’ hideaway cabin or a mountain refuge with a panoramic view are typical of the buildings designed by Norwegian architects JVA (Jarmund/Vigsnæs AS Arkitekter), all of which are marked by their osmosis with nature. “Our approach is like a detective arriving at a crime scene: we linger over the tiniest detail, we carry out enquiries, we dig,” exclaims Einar Jarmund, co-founder of the firm. “We work on very specific architectures, taking into account the weight of the environment, and if our scheme seems like the only possible one, it means we’ve found the right solution!” That solution has to “take into account the climatic and geographic conditions,” for the forces of nature are immutable and dictate their laws, insists Jarmund.

The Okstindan mountain refuge,1 200 metres above sea level, is emblematic of this philosophy. Baptized Rabot Tourist Cabin (after French geologist and geographer Charles Rabot), this complex, resistant structure in locally sourced wood was shaped with regard to the behaviour of snow and the direction of the winds. Built by the local community, it’s entirely self-sufficient, even though it’s connected to neither the water mains nor the electricity grid. Yet it can shelter 30 people. Rising from its roof, two chimneys echo the surrounding mountains in their pyramidal form. “The topography is the base, the geology, of the architecture. You have to understand the way nature behaves in order to take it into account,” continues Jarmund, before adding, “Architecture is never seductive when it’s simply ‘designed.’ You have to experience it in a precise context, open it up to every human interpretation possible, allow it to live. Above all else, architecture is a tool for organizing life, and for allowing human fulfilment. Architecture mustn’t just be ‘satisfactory’ but exciting, inclusive, with unexpected twists, like a good film script.” In accordance with the times, JVA also talks about an architecture “in good health,” and insists on the architect’s responsibility towards nature: “We have to find solutions so that architecture doesn’t jeopardize the planet, but on the contrary respects and preserves it.” It’s for this reason that JVA mostly uses wood, exploring the ecological, aesthetic and structural qualities of the material – wood that’s been bio-sourced or recycled, which the architects describe as an “enormous CO2 trap.”

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Another project, the Aluminium Cabin (2013)– a summer home by the sea in the Vestfold – stands like a sort of “mirage” installation among the rocks. Covered with a layer of aluminium that’s resistant to salt spray, the house reflects the landscape and the sky, like a chameleon changing colour in accordance with time, fog and frost. “Architecture has the beauty of a silent language. If it’s too ‘styled,’ it becomes disruptive. We try to stay as invisible as possible,” says Jarmund.

Even more adapted to its environment, the Svalbard Science Centre in Longyearbyen on the island of Spitsbergen takes into account the “physiological and psychological need for protection that you feel in Arctic latitudes,” as Jarmund explains. “Designing a window in such a hostile environment can quickly lead to irreparable consequences, or positive ones! Without architecture, human life isn’t possible in the Svalbard archipelago. Architecture allows survival; therefore it has to take into account the natural conditions in order to become the mediator between inside and out. In Norway, more particularly, being an architect means resolving a duality: that of architecture’s need to be part of nature but also the need to afford protection from it. Like a strange animal, it lives in nature, and nature returns the favour!”

www.jva.no

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Article 50/50877Since the untimely death of the great Zaha Hadid, her architecture studio has been pursuing her pioneering interrogation of form with a view to pushing ever further the limits of the real.

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January 07th 2017Architecture

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“What she has achieved with her inimitable manipulation of walls, ground planes and roofs, with those transparent, interwoven and fluid spaces, is vivid proof that architecture as a fine art has not run out of steam and is hardly wanting in imagination.” The quotation is from Jorge Silvetti, Nelson Robinson, Jr. Professor of Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Like many experts in the field, he particularly admires Zaha Hadid’s contribution to the forms of 21st-century architecture, which she transformed − alone and all-powerful in a world of men − into a territory of fantasy and sometimes even phantasmagoria. Following her untimely death, how does one sustain and keep alive this unique contribution? Such is the challenge facing her design studio, which still bears her name. “We currently have 55 projects either under construction or in development in 26 countries,” confides Patrik Schumacher, her right-hand man for nearly 30 years. “Over the next few months, a further twelve or so will be added to the list. By working with visionary clients and experts the world over, our teams honour the thinking of Zaha Hadid; they work with passion and commitment to continue to push back the limits of the real.”

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It was during her time at Rem Koolhaas’s firm OMA that the Iraqi-born British architect first discovered the importance of establishing bridges between theoretical research, architectural practice and cultural context. In the name of this vision, she founded her own office, Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA), and taught at the most prestigious universities : Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Hamburg and Vienna. Among her first built projects, a fire station at the Vitra factory in Weil am Rhein, Germany (1993) brought her to the attention of a wide public. In 2001, the Hoenheim tramway station in Strasbourg earned her the Mies van der Rohe European Union Award for Contemporary Architecture, while in 2004 she was crowned with the ultimate architecture award, the Pritzker Prize. It was then that her career really boomed. “Her constant challenges to push back the traditional frontiers of her discipline, her experimental work and her visionary aesthetic still inspire popular enthusiasm,” explains Maha Kutay, product designer at ZHA. What place does her legacy occupy, and what form will it take in the future? “Zaha never produced just one idea for a project, she explored dozens of directions at once,” says Kutay. “We’re sitting on an extraordinary ideas bank, built up over the last 30 years.” The loyalty of her teams is also exemplary. At her side from almost the beginning, Schumacher knows her language intimately, and heads a team of 40 people who were all trained by Hadid, and who’ve all been with the firm for at least a decade.

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“What defines Zaha’s work is the fluidity, the way the building and the ground are one and the same, the manner in which the built matter emerges, connected to the base,” continues Kutay. “There’s never a clear separation between the elements; everything floats, and flows into the rest. This principle runs through all that she did, from fashion to jewellery to design, as well, of course, as in her architecture. Everything in her method sought to open new roads of reflection and experimentation, to explore unknown paths. It was out of the question to accept the norm, to stop at a proposal that was merely pleasant to look at. Probably the most fascinating thing during this long story is that evolution in materials made some of the projects possible a posteriori, as if Zaha had always been one step ahead. From working with concrete and steel, we’re now turning to plastics, carbon fibre and curvilinear concretes. Until recently we were incapable of producing a piece of jewellery designed seven years ago, but with the advent of 3D metal printing this piece can at last be made.”

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Moreover, commissions continue to flow in: the firm has just redesigned the statuette for the next Brit Awards which will be held in February. “Zaha was enthusiastic about this project, because she had a deep love of fashion and music. The trophy has been rethought to give it a unique form,” adds Kutay. In the same spirit, Hadid had designed for French label Perrin Paris the Eiffel Glove Clutch, an evening bag with an ergonomic, sculptural golden handle. “Zaha adored this brand’s handbags with their integrated gloves or mittens and innovative shapes,” remarks Kutay. Unveiled at the 2016 FIAC, the Crista table centrepiece celebrates her long collaboration with Swarovski: a monumental form mixing crystal and metal, it makes reference to the natural processes of crystallization. Ten years of research and development were necessary in order to bring off this technological feat: Swarovski’s new-wave cut technology. This project demonstrated that, yet again, it was impossible for matter to resist Hadid’s visionary force.

“Zaha totally transformed the definition and the sense given to architectural design. She oriented the discipline towards a discovery, a quest for absolute freedom with respect to constraints and forms. Yet nothing was arbitrary in her work: everything was always highly accomplished, seeking perfection. Her vision will continue to live through us, to inspire those who she touched,” concludes Schumacher.

www.zahahadid.com

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The celebrated annual pop-up pavilion at London’s Serpentine Gallery is a new summery structure conceived by Francis Kéré for this the 17th edition since its establishment.

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July 26th 2017Art

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Built for the contemporary art museum in Kensington Gardens in London, the Serpentine pavilion is a temporary edifice. Every year the commission invites a foreign architect to conceive a new summer pavilion to host symposiums, performances and concerts. For its 17th transformation, architect Francis Kéré has conceived a structure which resembles a giant dome with a wooden frame inspired by his work on climate.

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Francis Kéré conceived this dome out of wood and metal with the goal of “symbolically highlighting the essential role of water as a necessary resource for the survival of men and their prosperity.” Because this, the 17th pavilion at the Serpentine Gallery, has an ecological function, with the architect from Burkino Faso drawing inspiration from previous works, notably in his native village of Gando where he built the primary school with an emphasis on protecting children from the oppressive heat of the region. This new pavilion is like a giant parasol allowing rainwater to be evacuated through the centre of the edifice. The structure also deals with the question of inter-community dialogue, as it reproduces the effects of a palaver tree under which African communities gather in the search of shade and discussion.

Summer Season at the SERPENTINE GALLERY
From June 8th to September 10th 2017

The Serpentine Pavillon by Francis Kéré

From June 23rd to October 8th 2017

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Francis Kéré, © Erik Jan Ouwerkerk

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Under its silver dome, the Louvre’s new satellite sparkles like a precious jewel in the Abu Dhabi sun. This sumptuous showcase, which will display nearly 600 artworks when it opens in November, is the work of Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel, who took Numéro on a behind-the-scenes visit.

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November 03rd 2017Architecture

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ByChristian Simenc

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It has landed at the tip of a formerly deserted island, a giant beetle with a perforated silvery wing case, permanently whitened by the sand-saturated wind. This giant beast is none other than the new Louvre-Abu Dhabi, designed by French architect Jean Nouvel and the first piece of a museum puzzle that has been christened the Cultural District. Planned by the emirate’s rulers, this new neighbourhood is being built on the 2,700-hectare island of Saadiyat (a quarter of the size of Paris) which, besides the Louvre, is set to include four major cultural buildings by four Pritzker Prize winners: the Zayed National Museum, which will tell the story of the United Arab Emirates, by British architect Norman Foster; the Maritime Museum, designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando; the Guggenheim-Abu Dhabi by the Canadian-American Frank Gehry; and last but not least, the Performing Arts Centre, dreamt up by the late Anglo-Iraqi Zaha Hadid.

It fell to Jean Nouvel to kick off this meeting of “starchitects”: “My Frenchness was very happy!” he joked during an on-site visit on 13 September. Even if, for the time being, the new Louvre-Abu Dhabi seems rather adrift in a context that’s yet to happen, it’s assuredly one of Nouvel’s most astonishing and most accomplished buildings ever. The challenge he set himself? An acute reinterpretation of local traditional architecture. “I know Arab architecture very well. One of the first buildings that brought me fame was the Institut du monde arabe in Paris [inaugurated exactly 30 years ago]. Arab architecture is based on two ideas that I particularly appreciate: light and geometry,” explains Nouvel. But his tour de force is having managed to spectacularly marry two archetypes of the Arab architectural vocabulary, the dome and the medina. “I’m a contextual architect,” he continues. “In that sense, my first wish was that this museum should fit in with the culture, history and geography of Abu Dhabi, that you wouldn’t be able to transplant it to Paris or New York, but that it would be designed precisely for this spot, and that it would be an Arab architecture of today.”

Arriving in Abu Dhabi via the Sheikh Khalifa Bridge, to the northeast of the city centre, the first thing the visitor perceives is these two characteristic forms that have been ingeniously merged so that you can no longer guess their respective limits: on the one hand an immense dome that has been slightly compressed, and on the other a series of white cubes of different sizes. The building is colossal – 97,000 square metres. Once you’ve crossed the threshold, you’re taken on a route that is voluntarily labyrinthine. “I didn’t want to create a straight avenue,” explains Nouvel, “but rather a promenade that would be marked by a series of discoveries, in the manner of the traditional Arab city. If you see everything the minute you arrive, you soon get bored.” Which is what inspired this collection of individual buildings in white concrete – 55 in total, of which 23 contain gallery space –, which do indeed make this building resemble a chunk of urbanity. “This museum is a micro-city. There’s a game of scale with the white cubes, which are obviously much bigger than the houses of a medina. Each volume houses a different gallery or function,” adds Nouvel.

“Under the dome there’s an effect of kinetic movement thanks to the variation in the sunlight, which has been described as a ‘light shower.’ The effect is breath-taking. But I also wanted this ‘parasol’ to be read as a metaphysical relationship with the sky.”

The exhibition galleries – which cover 8,600 square metres in total– are sometimes top-lit, sometimes not. Between each one are passageways offering a multitude of framed views onto the exterior, sometimes through metal mashrabiyas. Shortly after entering, visitors discover for the first time, thanks to an opening in the ceiling, an intriguing view onto a fragment of the dome. But it’s only after proceeding into the first exhibition space that they find themselves underneath it. And they’re in for a shock! Rising 29 metres at its zenith, the dome is formed from eight layers of metal (a steel frame covered with aluminium latticework) superimposed on each other in a thickness of 7 metres, each one being skewed in relation to those below. Its diameter is 180 metres and its 7,500-tonne weight is carried on four pillars that are carefully hidden inside the other buildings so that the dome appears to float in levitation. Nouvel describes the effect as “the aesthetic of the miracle.” “You always need to keep a bit of mystery,” he affirms, and it’s this mystery that is assuredly the crux of the whole spectacle.

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Louvre Abu Dhabi © Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority, Photography Sarah Al Agroobi, Architect Ateliers Jean Nouvel

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In a country where the sun is relentless and where it almost never rains, Nouvel has brought precipitation. Not a refreshing rain shower, however, but a shower of light diffused through the star motifs of the dome. “The light shower is first of all a memory,” he comments, “the memory of a tree, a palm tree for example, which, when you’re sitting under it and the sun shines through its leaves, creates a pattern of luminous dots on the ground.” But here there’s a subtle twist. “It’s a parasol for the city, and the rays of light that come through create a constellation of light on the ground and the walls.” The sun is like a giant projector that rotates around the colander of the dome. At one moment a ray of light will be blocked by one of the metal layers, but just a moment later, as the sun moves round, it will be able to pass. Stay just two or three minutes and you’ll see spots of light getting bigger or smaller, appearing or disappearing, perpetually changing with time and with the seasons. “Under the dome there is an effect of kinetic movement thanks to the variation in the sunlight, which has been described as a ‘light shower.’ The effect is breath-taking. But I also wanted this ‘parasol’ to be a sign of spirituality, to be read as a metaphysical relationship with the sky,” adds Nouvel. “The dome is also a symbol of a cosmography, of universality,” a celestial vault like that in which the desert Bedouins search for meaning among the stars.

“This very exact manipulation of light and shade is probably the most striking characteristic of the museum,” reckons Nouvel. But it’s not the only one, because this “contextual architect” has used all the means at his disposal. “We often talk about sustainability, and we rail against objects that have been dropped down from somewhere else and that you can find anywhere. But sometimes contemporary architecture is totally paradoxical. Here, on the contrary, we’re using all the features that the site has given us and which forge its identity, not so as to pastiche Arab architecture but to create something contemporary that is nonetheless anchored in the history of Abu Dhabi. We use the Persian Gulf and the sea breeze that refreshes it. We use light and nature, and cultural and historic components. I guess it’s what you’d call the genius loci.” Which also explains the interplay between the building and the sea; even the tide has its role, marking the white cubes with a line of green seaweed. “This project is a microclimate,” resumes Nouvel. “It uses the sea and seeks to create an optimal interface so that seawater can circulate between the buildings. It gives it a bit of a Venetian or Flemish air, like Bruges. Ultimately it’s a fragment of urbanity on the water, but a fragment of the city protected by a parasol. As such, it constitutes a series of spaces that can easily be used, even on very hot days, like a promenade that prolongs the city.” Under the dome the temperature is apparently three or four degrees lower than out in the open. “I didn’t want the museum to be a hermetically sealed building like a bank safe,” explains Nouvel, “but rather that it be open and agreeable to visit with an outside area in which people can move around comfortably despite the constraints of the climate.” And the ultimate in comfort is that the museum will even accessible by boat.

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5,000 garments, 15,000 couture accessories, tens of thousands of drawings – the Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent is at last unveiling its treasures with the opening of two museums: one in YSL’s former parisian ateliers, the other in a brand-new building in Morocco. Numéro art caught up with architects Olivier Marty and Karl Fournier – aka Studio KO – who have built a sumptuous brick palace in Saint Laurent’s cherished second city, Marrakech.

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January 10th 2018Architecture

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ByChristian Simenc

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Yves Saint Laurent museum, Marrakech

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Numéro art: How did you approach designing a museum dedicated to the work Yves Saint Laurent?

Studio KO: We imagined it as an interpretation of clothing: like a lined garment, the interior and exterior are different. The outside is ochre, while the inside is dressed in white, apart from the galleries which are black. The exterior, made of raw brick, is completely opaque. The interior draws in light via two patios, one walled with glass, the other with glazed brick.

Are there any connections between fashion and architecture?

While a wealthy woman buys herself a designer handbag, the heads of big brands buy themselves designer buildings, generally a museum. But for the Musée Yves Saint Laurent, Pierre Bergé made it very clear that the last thing he wanted was an architectural gesture.

For the first time in your work you’ve used curves.

Yes. We didn’t use curves before because we weren’t comfortable with them. But clothing has to have curves for flexibility. That’s why you find them generating several spaces in the museum. On the outside, the terrazzo flows up from the floor to the walls via a curved junction, like the fold in a cape trailing on the floor. To bring a certain formality to the building, we reinterpreted a pattern we’d found in the archives: an armhole hand-drawn in chalk by Saint Laurent, in other words the shoulder-sleeve junction. It hit us like a thunderbolt. Laid out flat, it was like an open book, almost an architectural drawing. It showed very simply how to link a curve or multiple curves – the shoulder – to a straight line – the sleeve.

Did clothing textures inspire the brick motifs?

Yes, we envisioned the brickwork like a fabric weave. Each volume has a different motif. In places the loosely spaced bricks form screens that let in light like mashrabiyas.

Which architects have influenced your work?

Two architects are very important to us: Peter Zumthor and Valerio Olgiati, both Swiss and both contextualists. Zumthor is a great writer. We had the chance to visit his baths in Vals – a breathtaking experience. With Olgiati, it’s the formal intelligence and dexterity that we admire. Jean Nouvel is also a great influence, especially his 2005 Louisiana Manifesto in which he says, “Each new situation requires a new architecture.” That sentence was an electroshock that still informs our work.

“Pierre Bergé was clear that the last thing he wanted was an architectural gesture”

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Yves Saint Laurent museum, Marrakech

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Context seems to be the driving force of your practice.

Context is primordial; each building should be different and impossible to replicate elsewhere. Each site possesses its own climate, colours, topography and archaeology. We always ask ourselves how a building will sit in the landscape. In Marrakech, earth is very present, which is what inspired the choice of brick, a local material that reproduces the city’s ochre colouring.

“The past is a great source of inspiration. Just look at Saint Laurent: he hated travelling, but was inspired by his constant reading.”

Are there any artists who inspire you?

You have to look at other disciplines to enrich your work, and art can transform your vision. We love James Turrell, for example, whose light and optical effects have directly influenced us. Yto Barrada’s films and photos about urbanism in Tangiers also speak to us strongly. We’re very impressed by Axel Vervoordt’s work at the Palazzo Fortuny in Venice. There’s always a dichotomy between architecture and decoration that can be difficult to bridge. Few can combine contradictions like Vervoordt does, and for us it’s very reassuring. His daring mix of disciplines, eras and civilizations has taught us a certain liberty.

Are there materials you particularly fetishize?

Our materials are mostly traditional: steel, marble, wood, concrete, stone. We’re not trailblazers or experimenters. The past is a great source of inspiration. Just look at Saint Laurent: he hated travelling, but was inspired by his constant reading. And no one can say his output wasn’t modern. Look at his vestal dress – what modernity!

Can architecture create emotion?

That’s the goal, but there are no recipes. It often comes from a subtle equation between space and light. Recently we visited Tadao Ando’s Chichu Art Museum in Japan, where Walter De Maria’s Time/Timeless/No Time fills an entire room. An enormous granite sphere, it seems ready to crush you. The rough cement walls and vertical light are essential to the effect: you really feel you’re in a cathedral.

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Yves Saint Laurent museum, Marrakech

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Invités par le programme Mentor & Protégé de Rolex, les architectes David Chipperfield et Simon Kretz ont pensé pendant 2 ans à la manière de révolutionner la ville. Ils les partagent à l’occasion d’un cycle de conférences organisé à Berlin du 3 au 5 février. Numéro les a rencontré.

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January 30th 2018Architecture

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Pendant deux ans, l’architecte David Chipperfield et son jeune confrère suisse Simon Kretz se sont unis pour réfléchir au futur de nos villes et au rôle éthique des bâtisseurs et urbanistes. À l’origine de ce rapprochement, le programme Mentor & Protégé de Rolex, qui réunit tous les deux ans, dans différents domaines artistiques (musique, art, architecture...) une sommité et un jeune talent. Leur seule obligation : passer deux années à échanger... La fin de ce mentorat sera célébrée en février par la sortie d’un livre commun et par un cycle de conférences à Berlin. Le duo a livré le fruit de ses réflexions à Numéro.

Numéro : L’un des enjeux principaux des villes du futur est la question du neuf et de l’ancien. Jusqu’où faut-il préserver notre patrimoine architectural ? Faut-il préférer le modèle muséal parisien à celui de Londres où l’on construit frénétiquement ?

David Chipperfield : Laissez-moi vous livrer deux anecdotes. La ville de Munich m’a demandé conseil sur un projet immobilier qui prévoyait de détruire des bâtiments des années 50. Présentaient-ils des qualités architecturales ? Non, ils étaient médiocres. Pour autant, ils forment une part de la mémoire de la ville. Détruisez-les, et c’est un pan de son histoire et de son âme qui disparaît. À Shanghai, cette fois-ci, je suis intervenu moi-même sur un bâtiment au nord du Bund [site iconique longeant la rivière Huangpu]. Les promoteurs souhaitaient sa destruction. Là encore, le bâtiment était médiocre, mais les autorités voulaient qu’on le préserve. En Chine, la solution la plus simple est de tout détruire pour reconstruire à l’identique, mais avec de meilleurs matériaux. Les Chinois sont tellement bons dès qu’il s’agit de copier ! J’ai dû batailler pour les convaincre qu’il fallait travailler à partir de l’architecture existante. Mais au bout de dix ans de restauration, je n’ai pas pu m’empêcher de penser : “Mon Dieu, tout ce travail pour ça ! On dirait que nous n’avons rien fait !” Mais il se passe, depuis, une chose intéressante : les gens s’arrêtent très souvent pour prendre des photos de notre bâtiment. À quelques pas, un autre immeuble a été détruit, et remplacé par une copie. Et devinez quoi ? Personne ne s’arrête pour le prendre en photo.

“Le problème principal des plans d’aménagement actuels est également leur incapacité à penser l’espace public.”

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Imaginer la ville du futur... cette idée n’est-elle pas illusoire à l’heure du développement anarchique des mégalopoles comme Shanghai justement ?

David Chipperfield : En effet, nous avons fait entrer dans les limbes de l’histoire toute notion d’utopie urbaine. Il faut bien avouer que les utopies du siècle dernier ont plutôt mal fini... Qu’avons-nous à la place ? Un “laisser-faire”, un blanc-seing donné aux promoteurs immobiliers, qu’on voudrait, cette fois-ci, dénués de toute idéologie. En réalité, ce qui est à l’œuvre, notamment dans les villes anglo-saxonnes comme Londres, est une logique libérale tout aussi idéologique. Les promoteurs ont le pouvoir et leur objectif principal est la valorisation maximale du terrain, l’augmentation des prix et des loyers, suscitant des processus de gentrification, de multiplication des tours pour maximiser la rentabilité du mètre carré... Une centaine de tours ont été construites à Londres ces dix dernières années, et 300 sont en projet ! L’autorité publique est reléguée à un rôle de contrôle d’un développement urbain qui, en réalité, n’est plus maîtrisé en amont (on parle de “development control board”). Il n’y a plus de planification.
Simon Kretz : Parce que les agents économiques ont imposé un récit qui voudrait que la Ville ou l’État soit incapable de penser efficacement un plan urbain.

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Depuis deux ans, votre collaboration sous l’égide du programme Mentor & Protégé de Rolex vous a menés à réfléchir aux conditions d’un développement urbain idéal. Quelles sont-elles ?

SK : L’ouvrage issu de ces réflexions ne prétend pas proposer des solutions clés en main. D’ailleurs, ce ne sont pas tant les propositions des promoteurs ou des architectes qui sont mauvaises que leur manière d’appréhender les projets qui pèche. Il faut absolument penser nos plans d’action au-delà du site d’intervention initial. Si vous êtes promoteur, vous construisez votre tour et le parking dont vous pensez avoir besoin. Mais si vous regardez la situation à plus grande échelle, si vous élargissez votre périmètre de réflexion, peut-être est-il plus rentable (pour vous et pour la société) de rénover un parking mal utilisé à proximité ?

DC : Le problème principal des plans d’aménagement actuels est également leur incapacité à penser l’espace public. Les connexions et la porosité entre le projet architectural et son environnement ne sont pas prises en compte. On se retrouve dans une situation comme celle de Doha où les rues ont disparu. Rien ne relie les tours les unes aux autres. Le problème des tours, à mon sens, n’est pas tant qu’elles gâchent le paysage. Le problème des tours est à leur pied !

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Le livre On Planning. A Thought Experiment de David Chipperfield et Simon Kretz sera disponible en février (en anglais) chez Koenig Books, www.koenigbooks.co.uk, età la Serpentine Gallery, www.serpentinegalleries.org

Conférences et cérémonie de clôture du cycle 2016-2017 du programme Mentor & Protégé de Rolex, à Berlin, du 3 au 5 février, www.rolexmentorprotege.com

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What will the ideal city look like in 20 years’ time? This is the question that british architect David Chipperfield and his young swiss confrère Simon Kretz spent 24 months thinking about as part of Rolex’s Mentor & Protégé programme. Numéro asked them what answers they’d found.

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February 02nd 2018Architecture

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Interview byThibaut Wychowanok

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For the past two years, the brilliant minds of British starchitect David Chipperfield and his young Swiss confrère Simon Kretz have been joining forces to think about the future of our cities. They came together under Rolex’s Mentor & Protégé programme which, every two years, brings together an established heavyweight and a young talent in artistic fields such as music, art and architecture. Their only obligation: to spend two years together coming up with ideas for a better world. Chipperfield and Kretz have been thinking about how the design of cities – where 54% of the world’s population now lives – might be improved. Numéro caught up with them as they went to press with their conclusions, which will also be the subject of a lecture series in Berlin.

NUMÉRO: One of the principal challenges for cities in the future is the question of the new and the old – how much should our architectural heritage be preserved? Which is better, Paris’s museum approach or London’s building frenzy?

DAVID CHIPPERFIELD: Let me tell you two stories. The city of Munich asked my advice with respect to a development that involved destroying buildings from the 1950s. Were they architecturally interesting? No, rather mediocre. And yet they’re part of Munich’s memory. Destroy them, and it’s a whole chunk of the city’s soul and history that disappears. In Shanghai, I was involved with a development concerning a building on the north of the Bund. The developers wanted to demolish it. Once again, it was mediocre, but the authorities, who are becoming more sensitive to the idea of preservation, wanted it kept. In China, the simplest solution is to demolish and build an exact replica but with better materials. The Chinese are amazing when it comes to copying! I had to fight to convince them that we needed to work with the existing architecture. But after ten years of restoration, I couldn’t help saying to myself, “My god, all that work for this?! You’d think we hadn’t done anything at all.” But something interesting has happened since: people often stop to take photos of our building. Just nearby, another building has been demolished and replaced by a copy. And guess what? Nobody stops to photograph it.

“The problem with towers, as I see it, isn’t so much that they spoil the landscape – the problem with towers is on the ground at their bases!” David Chipperfield

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Imagining the city of the future... Isn’t that rather a quixotic exercise in an age of anarchic megalopolises such as Shanghai?

DAVID CHIPPERFIELD: As a society we have indeed relegated all ideas of urban utopia to historical limbo. But it has to be said that the utopias of the 20th century generally turned out rather badly... What have we done instead? We’ve put in place a laissez-faire system, a blank cheque given to property developers who are supposedly devoid of all ideology this time around. Except that in reality what’s going on, particularly in American or British cities, such as London, is a logic of free-market liberalism that is just as ideological. Developers have all the power, and their primary goal is maximum return on their land, an increase in rental value that sets off a process of gentrification, a multiplication of towers to maximize the profitability of each and every square metre... Around 100 towers have been built in London over the past ten years, and another 300 are planned! Public authorities have been relegated to a role of oversight with respect to urban development – the “develop- ment control board” as they call it – which, in reality, is no longer globally planned in advance. There’s no proper planning anymore.

SIMON KRETZ: Because economic factors have imposed a narrative which claims that the municipality and the state are incapable of pro- ducing efficient urban planning.

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For the past two years, you’ve been working together under Rolex’s Mentor & Protégé programme to come up with models of ideal urban development. What conclusions have you drawn?

SIMON KRETZ: The first publication that’s come out of this process doesn’t claim to offer readymade solutions. And it’s not so much that architects’ or developers’ schemes are necessarily bad, but rather that their manner of evaluating projects is problematic. We absolutely have to consider the effects of our planning decisions beyond the particular site concerned. If you’re a developer, you build your tower and along with it the car park that you think you need. But if you look at the situation on a larger scale, if you enlarge your perimeter of analysis, perhaps actually it would be more profitable (both for you and for society) to renovate an underused car park nearby?

DAVID CHIPPERFIELD: The main problem with today’s development plans is their inability to provide decent public space. The interconnections between the architectural project and its environment aren’t taken into account. We find ourselves in a situation like in Doha where the streets have disappeared. Nothing links the towers to each other. The problem with towers, as I see it, isn’t so much that they spoil the landscape – the problem with towers is on the ground at their bases!

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The book On Planning. A Thought Experiment by David Chipperfield and Simon Kretz would be available in February at Koenig Books, www.koenigbooks.co.uk, and at the Serpentine Gallery, www.serpentinegalleries.org

Conferences and closing ceremony of 2016-2017 cycle Rolex’s Mentor & Protégé programme in Berlin, 3 February 2018 - 5 February 2018, www.rolexmentorprotege.com

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Paris’s Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine has inaugurated on November a major retrospective of Renzo Piano’s work. On this occasion Numéro spoke to him about the fundaments of his approach.

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January 02nd 2016Architecture

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Numéro: Your exhibition at the Cité de l’Architecture is called La méthode Piano. Can you describe your method?

Renzo Piano: Everyone finds their professional path in a different way. For me it was through my family – my father, uncles and grandfather were all builders. So much so that, when I got interested in architecture, I thought it was simply a question of building. But I know a lot of other people
came to architecture from an artistic approach, where the building is considered as a sculpture. In the end, the initial impetus doesn’t matter much, the important thing is to understand that architecture goes well beyond all that. Those who think it’s just about the beauty of space need to learn that it’s also about people, society, humanism and the art of building. Conversely, as a constructor, I had to learn that you can’t do without poetry and beauty. If you want to talk about my way of working – I never use the word “method” because I work organically – then I would say that I go quite naturally from one approach to another. At 9.00 am I’m something of a poet; at 10.00 more a builder; and at 11.00 rather a humanist, before becoming a poet again. There are other professions like that − film makers for example. I thought of them because I’m working on plans for a movie museum in Los Angeles, which means that I met quite a few of them. Like us, they work in fragments, scene by scene, piece by piece. They share with us this art of assemblage. In fact it’s a bit like you’re creating a mosaic, spending half your time up close and the other half at a distance, in order to have an overview of the whole thing − to check that the hand isn’t too big or the nose too small. Jean Prouvé, who I was lucky enough to know, told me that you don’t run a project, as people often think, by going from the general to the detailed. In truth, you go from the general to the detailed and then back from the detailed to the general in one and the same movement.

Your interest in light, lightness and materials is a constant in your work. Does this add up to a style?

I would call it a coherence. An integrity. It’s true that among the axes of my work there’s light. It’s always present. Right at the beginning of my career, I carried out experiments with my father and my brother. Among the things I’ve always been curious about, lightness does indeed have an important place. Why lightness? Because it interests me more than heaviness. Lightness is the art of taking away. It goes together with transparency... and with light, once again. I think it must have something to do with the fact that I was born in Genoa, on the Mediterranean. This imaginary childhood is a sort of quarry I dig into without realizing it.

How do you find the right balance between responsibility and disobedience?

You have to be a good listener. And for that, you need to understand that the people who have the most interesting things to say are often those who keep quiet. Don’t listen to those who shout, listen to the minorities who don’t express themselves. Ten years ago, when we began the enlargement project at the Columbia campus in Harlem, I spent a lot of time there. I spoke to the Hispanic and Afro-American communities who make up the majority of the local population. I listened to those who were the most discreet. And I understood that it was important for the building to float, that it should be lifted up so that the ground floor would remain an open, public space. This was a response to a strong desire on the part of the local population – their desire to live together and a share a common space.

Renzo Piano Building Workshop – La méthode Piano,

11 November 2015 to 29 February 2016 at the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris.

www.citechaillot.fr.

Interview by Thibaut Wychowanok.

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The two leading figures of French architecture come back to Galerie Azzedine Alaïa with 8 of their incredible projects for museums, none of which have been completed so far.

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GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM OF GUADALAJARA, Guadalajara, Mexico, Jean Nouvel.

Credits : Ateliers Jean Nouvel/ArtefactoryLab

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View from the exhibition "Musées à venir", Jean Nouvel and Claude Parent at Galerie Azzedine Alaïa.

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MUSÉE D'ART MODERNE OBLIQUE (1972), Claude Parent.

Original phtographs from Michel‐Charles Gaffier. Taken up by Dennis Bouchard

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View from the exhibition "Musées à venir", Jean Nouvel and Claude Parent at Galerie Azzedine Alaïa.

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LE NOUVEAU MUSÉE (2014-2015), Claude Parent.

Credits : Dennis Bouchard

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CENTRE INTERNATIONAL DE L’ART PARIETAL LASCAUX IV, Lascaux, France (concours 2012), Jean Nouvel.

Credits : Ateliers Jean Nouvel

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PROJET DE PLATEAU BEAUBOURG (1971), reviewed in 2015

Credits : Dennis Bouchard

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View from the exhibition "Musées à venir", Jean Nouvel and Claude Parent at Galerie Azzedine Alaïa.

Exhibition "Musées à venir", Jean Nouvel and Claude Parent, Galerie Azzedine Alaïa, 18 rue de la Verrerie, Paris 4e. Until February 28th, from 11am to 7pm everyday.

February 01st 2016Architecture

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