Museum for the city
Architecture design for a museum of contemporary art
- Category
- Architecture
- Year
- 2007
- Location
- Novi Sad SR
- Size
- 12,000 m2
- Role
- Architect
- Program
- Museum and related facilities
- Collaboration
- Magdalena Szczypka (SMASZ)
- Clients
- Association of architects Novi Sad, Museum of contemporary art of Vojvodina
Instead of another building surrendered to the temporarity of an architectural style, the new Museum of Contemporary Art aims at becoming a place in the
city, a new destination, by means of materializing in a genuinely unique urban and topographical condition in a flat landscape of Novi Sad.
The proposal for the new museum distinguishes itself through the irresistibility of its spectacular relation to the city. It frees the building from the dependency on the art curatorship and explores the essential connection between the museum and the city that could grant the building a lasting relevance.
As such, the proposal aims at a genuine freedom of architecture from arbitrariness of forms and speculation on program. Eventually the building explores the possibility for a lasting meaningful relation between city and architecture in general by offering a wide field for continuous interpretations and endless reinvention of that relation.
The museum inspires and enables the critical juxtaposition and interaction between the public domain and art world. By means of occasional openings in the roof and atria, the art from inside is interacted with the audience from the public roof. The pedestrians are given to see glimpses of the latest art developments.
They are dragged in to the art world. Their imagination is challenged. However, they are not acting only aside in this scene. On contrary, a tangible condition is created in which museum visitors and artists are exposed to the honesty of the unprepared viewer. The public surface of the roof becomes the everlasting topographical attraction. As such it turns into crucial interface between art and reality facilitating their never-ending debate.
Contemporary art has for a great deal become a commodity the value of which is defined by largely unfounded market speculation. Art critique is unable to catch up and often ends up fueling the same bubble. In this situation, making the art accessible to a wider seems to be essential for the assessment of its critical values.