Walker Expansion

Sunday sees the opening of the new and improved Walker Art Center with its Herzog and De Meuron-designed expansion to its existing facilities by Edward Larrabee Barnes. The Swiss duo - known for their simple, yet graphically and texturally rich exteriors - will also see its design for San Francisco's de Young Museum open later this year. They - along with Renzo Piano - seem poised to take over the U.S. market on cultural facilities, specifically art museums. While a building by H&DM would probably not be confused with one by Piano (and vice-versa), what they have in common is a respectful approach to designing spaces for art, a trend in architecture that goes against buildings and spaces that tend to compete or upstage the art within, as in Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao.


Image from The New York Times

Tyler Green's review of the expansion states that "While the [Milwaukee Art Museum by Santiago Calatrava] relied on its building to attract an audience, the new Walker plays it safe and relies upon its collection," referring to the debt incurred by MAM in the wake of its signature building, a bird in flight on Lake Michigan's shore. Is this experience, as well as the closing of Steven Holl's Bellevue Art Museum shortly after its unveiling (it's set to reopen this year...but for how long?), telling museum director's that the "Bilbao effect" has run its course?


Image from The New York Times

While Nicolai Ourousoff thinks the Walker Art Center's expansion could be more striking and sophisticated, his review is positive, stating "Instead of a monumental object, the architects have fashioned a building that hovers at the intersection of urban and suburban cultures - no small feat in a country that seems to be dividing more and more along those lines."

Christopher Hawthorne's take is more about decoration than the museum's fit into the American context (via): "It will be fascinating to judge the results...when a prominent architect grows bold enough to put ornament back on a facade, where it is still pretty much taboo. For all their architectural daring, Herzog and De Meuron still weren't willing to go that far in Minneapolis."

But it seems like the lack of ornament on the exterior isn't the architects choice so much as a necessity given the budget and its inherent focus on the art over the architecture. Herzog and De Meuron are probably the most overtly ornamental architects in contemporary practice, embedding images in concrete and glass, elevating gabions to the status of architecture (and maybe even art), and generally pushing materials and technology to find new avenues of expression for architecture. Their aluminum-clad tower and simple interiors in Minneapolis sounds like a compromise, but definitely not a bad one.