PROFILE
When you move into an urban space where there used to only be cars you experience it in a new way
What were the main challenges? It was a very tight, very urban site, so in order to create exhibition floors with a certain volume, we had to expand quite creatively. We needed to expand between two street façades and we needed a more open representation at street level – something more like a storefront. With a vertical museum structure, we needed to bring people in an easy yet recog- nisable way from one floor to the next. And we needed to connect the two buildings and create interactive areas that would support both. We have done that by creating a new common space on the first floor that links the buildings in a simple manner and also makes it easy for visitors to orientate themselves. San Francisco is an earthquake region so that was also quite a big technical challenge, as we wanted to create free-span exhibition spaces without columns.
How well do the two buildings work together? We tend to call them dance partners, as they’re like two different, strong personalities dancing tightly together in that urban setting.
What was the aim of your recent redesign of Times Square? It’s a way of giving Times Square back to the people of New York, by removing traffic and creating a new floor for both citizens and visitors. When you move into an urban space where there used to be only cars you experience it in a new way. You have a dif- ferent speed, a different height, a different location, so you perceive the surroundings, surfaces and façades in a different manner. It encourages new activities – sitting, standing, doing yoga – but it also has an infrastructural element to it, by providing better drainage, new wiring, lighting and benches.
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What are you working on going forward? One project under construction is the Lascaux IV Caves Museum in France, which includes the recreation of the Lascaux caves and their 10,000-year-old paintings. We’re also building The King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture in Dhahrab, Saudi Arabia, which is the biggest building we’ve ever done – it’s a huge cultural centre housing the country’s first public cin- emas as well as a library, a concert hall, an exhibition hall and a lifelong learning centre. We have several projects in Norway, includ-
ing the Bergen National Academy of the Arts, and we’re just starting the expansion of the Ordrupgaard museum in Copenhagen. We’ve also just shared first prize with the Japanese
firm SANAA for the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest, so we will need to com- pete further on that one. We currently have about 12 projects under construction and 40 on the drawing table.
Which other architects do you admire? Among living architects, I think Frank Gehry made a huge difference to how architects are perceived. You can like or dislike the repeti- tion in his work but there was a turning point in history, where architects started gaining overall importance again. Then there are archi- tects like Herzog and de Meuron who produce fantastic projects. You also have small compa- nies like the Austrian firm
marte.marte or the architect Fernando Menis from Tenerife, who
CLAD mag 2015 ISSUE 2
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