ASPEN ART MUSEUM ArtCrush
MAGAZINE
34
ARTCRUSH HONOREE: SHIGERU BAN
to sustainability and respect for the people who use his buildings. These values are as evident in the museum as in Ban’s other projects, which include refugee shelters and disaster-relief projects. In the hands of another archi- tect, the museum might have become an ostentatious stylistic statement that never settled in. However, Ban’s building has aged gracefully, earning the approval of its community in the process. “It’s a very sensitive build- ing,” Bailey says. “It quickly became a beloved part of town and that’s because it is good architecture.”
Its visual porosity invites curiosity; it’s not an opaque box that announces exclusivity. Upon entering, visitors can choose to wander through galleries situated in the building’s core or ascend a 10-foot-wide staircase on the perimeter that leads directly to a rooftop mountains. Throughout the building, Ban has relied on wood, anticipating today’s craze for timber. The material has a lower carbon footprint than steel and concrete and also radiates a sense of warmth. The year the Aspen Art Museum opened to the public, Ban was awarded the highly prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize. The award jury celebrated the architect’s sense of social responsibility, commitment
architects like Renzo Piano, John Lautner and Antoine Predock had com- missions within the city limits, but their buildings were all private homes. The unveiling of Ban’s building for the museum in 2014 was something of a turning point. “The architecture speaks,” says Spencer Bailey, a New York-based architecture critic who grew up in nearby Breckenridge. “It’s a way of saying that Aspen is a serious art town.” While the Aspen Art Museum is distinctive, and initially received mixed reviews, it has proven to be a good neighbor, in dialogue with its surround- ings. The facade’s brown hue, boxy silhouette and grid pattern nod to the brickwork found throughout the town.
At any given moment, the Aspen Art Museum never looks quite the same. Designed by the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, the building is essentially a glass cube enveloped in a latticed screen made from paper and wood. Sunlight streams through the woven grid, casting dramatic shadows throughout the space. The eect is as ephemeral as it is ethereal, changing with the seasons and the time of day. The urban fabric of Aspen consists of two-story brick buildings built in the late 19th century, when the city was a mining hub. As it became a destina- tion for ski enthusiasts in the 1940s and steadily evolved into a glamorous holiday destination, the character of downtown didn’t change. Famous
Opposite Shigeru Ban in Shôin, Suzu, Ishikawa, 2024
Photography Hiroyuki Hirai
Read more about the Aspen Art Museum’s Shigeru Ban-designed home here: aspenart museum.org/ about/new-building
On August 2, Shigeru Ban will be presented with the Aspen Award for Art at the ArtCrush gala.
Diana Budds is a design journalist. She lives in New York.
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online