A museum grows in Houston
When Renzo Piano?s Menil Collection building opened in 1987 critics called it ?just perfect.? Johnston Marklee?s Drawing Institute improves on perfection Is it an insult to say my favorite part of the museum is the trees"
Not in the case of the Menil Collection campus in Houston. The opening of the institution?s latest building?the Menil Drawing Institute, on November 3?was also the occasion for replacing a diseased tree with a 25-year-old live oak, which arrived wrapped like a sculpture and necessitated closing a street.
This particular tree was on an open lawn opposite the Menil Collection building, the two-story Renzo Piano-designed pavilion that opened in 1987 and launched Piano?s career as architect of silvery rectangles with complicated roofs, as later seen in Basel and Chicago and Dallas and New York and Los Angeles. The first is the best?and was for many, including me, a revelation of how a museum could be. No giant steps. No marble. No getting lost.
Yes to free admission. Yes to natural light. Yes to windows.
Alamy
Menil Collection building.
The Menil sits right on the ground, with painted-wood siding and white trim extending for 402 feet. Its roof?wave-like concrete blades, engineered in collaboration with Peter Rice of Ove Arup & Partners?rides a white steel structure below a set of gently gabled skylights. Floating visually above the opaque walls, the roof creates a deep porch from which to look out on the lawn surr...
-------------------------------- |
London Marathon swaps plastic bottles for edible Ooho drinks capsules |
|
Ancient Temples of Mount Laojun Peak
08-05-2024 08:40 - (
architecture )