Mueseum Commons

a+u’s July issue features 12 recent museum projects at a moment when the museum is being reimagined as something more than a building organized around galleries. Some of these newly built museums open toward the street, as in OMA’s expansion of New Museum, which enters into dialogue with its SANAA-designed neighbor – 2 buildings reciprocal in program yet distinct in character that as a pair engage directly with their urban environment. Other projects documented here elevate the museum, freeing the ground for public use. Herzog & de Meuron’s M+ hovers above reclaimed harbor land in Hong Kong as a transparent horizontal platform organized around a central plaza. In Los Angeles, David Geffen Galleries – LACMA by Peter Zumthor and SOM spans Wilshire Boulevard in a single monolithic gesture, stitching a fragmented campus into a continuous horizontal surface. Working within rather than above its site, Ateliers Jean Nouvel preserves a Haussmannian façade of Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain at Palais-Royal in Paris while glazing the side façades to open the interior to the street. Together, the projects presented in this issue suggest a broader shift in the role of the museum to something akin to a commons – a place for gathering as much as an edifice for the display of objects.