Museum

Winning the competition to design the National Museum of African American History and Culture has consolidated the practice’s US portfolio with arguably the nation’s most prestigious new building. Located on Constitution Avenue, adjacent to the National Museum of American History and the Washington Monument, the museum will house exhibit galleries, administrative spaces, theatre space and collections storage space for the NMAAHC. As lead designer for the Freelon Adjaye Bond/SmithGroup (FAB) team, David Adjaye’s approach has been to establish both a meaningful relationship to this unique site as well as a strong conceptual resonance with America’s deep and longstanding African heritage. The design rests on three cornerstones: the “corona” shape and form of the building; the extension of the building out into the landscape – the porch; and the bronze filigree envelope.

Xing white porcelain is an important part in the history of Chinese porcelain development. Its invention and production broke the situation that celadon dominated the world since the Shang Dynasty, andopened up the famous “Celadon South & White North” phenomenon in the history of Chinese ceramics.

The building reaches the city’s height limit of 130 ft from grade in just seven stories. Its most prominent features are the angled facades of the exhibit floors on the south and west sides of the site, encased in a black box. Propped up on columns over an aligned, existing structure, the black box comprises the bulk of building including its exhibition spaces. This is a floating structure which creates public and private spaces for a combination of different uses.

The open-air museum celebrates the friendship between Japan and the state of Minas Gerais and what this relationship was able to construct concrete and immaterial. The design is a bridge over a lake. The bridge metaphorically connects territories, times, ideas and ideals. The lake is like the sea between the nations, and also the one of the challenges, of the conquests, of the lived times. Actions and works become visible through striking dates that emerge in the water, and the submerged spaces represent the regions of the unconscious of feeling and memory.

Man’s fascination with mountains has been unbroken as long as anyone can remember. LUMEN gives this fascination a photographic home: located at the summit of the region Kronplatz (in South Tyrol), 1,800 square meters are dedicated to mountain photography. Spanning four floors LUMEN offers the possibility to experience the history of mountain photography from its beginnings until the present as well as displaying the art of mountain- photographers from all over the world.

On the mountainside of Guniujiang Resort sits Qifeng Village of Shitai County, Chizhou City, Anhui Province. Our first visit there took us an hour’s drive around the steep and winding mountain roads. At the entrance of the village stood two ginkgo trees, which were said to be over 1,000 years old, with trunks so strong that at least two or three people were needed to encircle one. Flat farmlands with crops as tall as a man stretched in front of the village, and farmhouses with white walls and black tiles lined along the hillside. Qifeng Village seemed to have receded into the bamboo groves in the mountain.

Norval Foundation is located in the Steenberg area on the slopes of the Constantiaberg Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa, and is surrounded by vineyards. The project provided a unique opportunity for architecture studio dhk; a client brief with the aspiration to create a world-class art and cultural centre in an exceptional location that is be open to the public.

How to see it?