Enter the museum, the most radical site of experimentation for architecture.

This book tackles the role of architecture in shaping the museum of the future, and its undeniable power in articulating our relationship to art. Only through the museum can we understand what art is and what its growing role in our urban environment might be.

Grenier, researched museum architecture around the world to consider such questions as: How does architecture reformulate the experience of the museum and art itself? To what extent does museum architecture allow art to exist differently in the city?

This book presents different types and forms of museums: the Louvre Abu Dhabi as a replica of a museum-city, inspired by Paris; the Guggenheim Museum and the Centre Pompidou as drive-through museums, shaped in an age when the car is protagonist; the visual database ImageNet, critical to the development of AI, challenges the museum as an encyclopedia; the new wing of the American Museum of Natural History in New York is considered against architecture’s role as enabler of the human experience of nature. Through this analysis, museum architecture is revealed as being a catalyst for a contemporary definition of the urban and esthetic phenomenon and its study essential in understanding why we need it more than ever.

About The Author

Beatrice Grenier is a Paris-based curator, writer and editor. She has lived in Montreal, Shanghai, New York where she worked closely with acclaimed artist Cai Guo-Qiang. She is the Paris desk editor of ArtAsiaPacific and a contributor to Domus. She is currently working on the architectural project for the Fondation Cartier’s new headquarters in Paris.