Busch-Jaeger en puls 13

Movements in architecture 01 | 2013 Resounding architecture by LPR Architects Interview with Daniel Libeskind Museum Folkwang It's all over ­ looking back at the Spanish museum boom » Editorial Specialists in designing museums and sensitively handling existing historical structures: Enrique Sobejano and Fuensanta Nieto The topic: the museum in the 21st century pulse in conversation with Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos, Madrid How did your office come to specialize in museum architecture? Museums establish always a link between the past and the future. A museum building is able to carry out the transformation of a public space as well as to establish a dialogue with the past, and this is probably the main reason that interests us. Museum construction had experienced a real boom over the past ten years, especially in Spain, though this was of course brought to an abrupt end with the onset of the Eurozone crisis. What was your experience of this? In the past twenty years, Spain has developed an ambitious program of new museums and cultural buildings that the country needed and didn't have before. It must be borne in mind that the Spanish democratic and economic development took place decades later than in other European countries, which had the In retrospect, what role did the so called "Bilbao effect" play in these developments? And why has it up to now been so difficult to transfer this effect to other museum projects and cities? The "Bilbao effect" cannot be reduced only to a failure, as many want to see it now. It also had some positive effects on a political, journalistic as well as popular level. After Gehry's building, architecture became a subject of conversation among the public and in the media. The Guggenheim Museum with its immediate international success generated great expectations, but also favored a conception of architecture as spectacle which resulted in a set of formalistic and iconic followers. Nowadays museums have become multi-purpose spaces, hosting events, festivals, comercial presentations, restaurants and shops. And all this is questioning the ever difficult relationship that exists between art and architecture. pulse 01 | 2013 chance of building many of their cultural and social institutions years before. Every time there is an intense construction activity, as happened recently in Spain, one can find positive and negative examples. Are museums the modern cathedrals of our time? Holy sites that draw throngs of enlightened modern day pilgrims? There have been moments in the past when a particular program or architectural typology seemed to represent the Zeitgeist better than any other. That was probably the case of the medieval Gothic cathedral, the Renaissance palazzo or the social housing projects in the origins of the Modern Movement. The museum acquired perhaps that role in the past 20 years, though I think however that we are reaching a level of saturation, where the same artists are exhibited i...