materiality glass detailing ambiguity reflection
The basic supposition that a museum gallery is little more than a decorated box in which to house an exhibition has been repeatedly tossed aside as the galleries themselves become physical, large scale manifestations of the works they contain, an extension of the act of creation, not to compete with their collections but to create a sense of ‘completeness’ between display and museum. This sense of ‘fit’ can only be accomplished through a proper understanding of the exhibits and the context which the new structure will represent. Responses to these two criteria come together perfectly in the Toledo Museum of Art’s recent expansion, the Glass Pavilion (2006). Positioned at the mouth of the Maumee River in northwestern Ohio, Toledo controlled a distribution nexus that delivered goods to the burgeoning manufacturing towns of Detroit, Michigan, Chicago and Cleveland along the Great Lakes and pro- vided rail transit into the midwestern heartland. Due to location and industrialisation Toledo became the headquarters of America’s largest glass manufacturers earning it the nickname ‘the Glass City’. Glass barons gave their city an extensive art and glass collection, housed in the Toledo Museum of Art, a finely detailed 1901 Greek Revival structure, until it was deemed that the large and renowned glass collection deserved an exhibition structure of its very own. SANAA, the collaborative partnership of Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, was given the opportunity to create the new Glass Pavilion opposite a boulevard to the Toledo Museum of Art’s main entrance in the centre of a lightly treed city block. The new single storey structure sits upon a slightly raised aluminum wrapped concrete plinth with a reveal at the base which allows the pavilion to float slightly above the lawn. Wrapped in floor to ceiling plate glass with clear silicon vertical joints the entire exterior envelope becomes a conjunction of the durability and strength of a glass city the glass pavilion at the toledo museum of art
museums | saana toledo ohio by dru mckeown
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On Site review 20: archives and museums
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