Museum Interior Design | The Children’s Museum of the Arts | New York City | WORK AC

After 20 years in a tight space near Chinatown, New York City’s beloved Children’s Museum of the Arts secured a new space three times the size of their previous location, giving the CMA an opportunity to reinterpret the best parts of their current museum and add the new programs they had long desired.

The spaces are organized around a large central gallery that gives CMA a new major exhibition and event space. Around the “white boxes” of the gallery and classrooms smaller spaces are transformed into highly specific ‘moments’ through a “color wheel” that identifies the different programs.

The existing configuration of the space, an old loading dock, is used to organize the different flows of people. Upon entering the museum, the ‘7 and up’ kids can access the art gallery on the upper level, along with the classrooms, art studios and media lab.........more about the Children's Museum 

Museum Interior Design | Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience | Seattle | Olson Kundig Architects

The Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience, in Seattle’s Chinatown International District, provides space for community meetings and events, public space for the neighborhood, theater space for performances and presentations, exhibit spaces for community art and emerging Asian Pacific American artists, family-centered learning environments and leadership development for neighborhood youth. The design grew out of the original, 1910 multi-story building that served as a social center and living quarters for Chinese, Japanese and Filipino immigrants. Drawing inspiration from the building’s rich history, we saved as much of the original building as possible. In addition to building materials – such as timbers cut out between floors – the character and scale of the building were maintained. On the upper floors, original narrow doorways and corridors and small rooms preserve the intimacy of the original space, and are a venue for the museum’s immersion exhibits.....more

Museum Interior Design | Music Museum | Auditori- Barcelona Musical Centre | Arriola and Fiol Arquitectes

The project of the  was initiated in the year 1989. The editing of the program predicted one program of musical activities that surpassed by far a simple concert hall. Thus, the new centre would house more than three halls for listening (symphonic, chamber and polyvalent), a school for higher musical studies, and a museum of music. The present project of construction of the Music Museum will complete the assembly of the Auditori.....more

Museum Interior Design | Smithsonian Institution Collections and Support Centre| Landover | Maryland

This adaptive reuse project transformed a 1960s warehouse into a secure, efficient, state-of-the-art hub for the Smithsonian Institution’s growing museum programs. The product of consolidating programs from multiple facilities, the renovated space incorporates workshops for exhibit fabrication and graphics production, environmentally controlled collections storage, thousands of linear feet of library shelving and a rare-book conservation lab. Organized into “buildings” surrounding a community plaza, functions are interconnected by a series of “streets” that serve both pedestrians and forklifts. ............more

Museum Interior Design | Museum of Islamic Art | Doha | Jean-Michel Wilmotte

Built on a man-made island, this imposing white building is a powerful expression of Pei's vision.

Working together for the first time, ClickNetherfield and Wilmotte & Associates have created an environment of light and transparency. The project was described by our Technical Director Mike Chaplin as "the largest we have undertaken, involving complex logistics and electromechanical opening systems for some of the biggest cases ever made"........more

Museum Interior Design | Zoological Museum | Svendborg | Denmark | Arkitekma Architects

The museum provides a new framework for learning about the world of nature. It makes use of the methods of the theatre and film to develop a new exhibition concept for natural history; an exhibition concept in which the visitors themselves are very much part of the exhibition. The museum experience is thereby lifted from one of passive registration to a total experience which engages the visitors and stimulates their senses...........more

Museum Interior Design | Madison Childrens’ Museum | TKWA

The Madison Children’s Museum approached TKWA to adapt this 1930’s Montgomery Ward building into a new home for their community-oriented programming needs. A former state office building, the facility is ideally located on Madison’s popular Capitol Square with outstanding views of both the Capitol dome and Lake Mendota. The adaptive re-use of this prominent building will play an important role in the life of the Square.

Completed in August 2010, the Madison Children’s Museum is intended to be an active learning environment rather than a typical museum of static displays.

Nordic Watercolor Museum | Sweden | Ferlund + Logan Architects

An exhibition of 300 botanical watercolors by the artist Cecilia Edefalk required tall tables for easy viewing. A minimum of materials where used to emphasize the artwork without distraction. The tables where built locally with unfinished wood to blend with the museums unfinished floors. The tables where arranged in various groupings throughout the spaces..............more

Museum Interior Design | National Museum of Ethnology | Leiden | Opera Amsterdam

‘Het Paviljoen' opened in November 2009 as the result of a special restoration process. The building, part of the former academic hospital complex in which the Museum of Ethnology is now housed, has a monumental status. It was originally built in 1876 as part of the Leiden hospital to accommodate patients in quarantine.


It has many historical characteristics, which have been reinstated during the renovation and were integrated in the fresh and light interior. It contains two meeting rooms on the ground floor and a guesthouse with five bedrooms on the first floor.
OPERA Amsterdam designed outspoken tailor-made carpets throughout the spaces, which complement the neutral over-all atmosphere.

Museum Interior | Genieloods | Center for contemporary art | Vijfhuizen | The Netherlands | Designed By Office Jarrik Ouburg

The steel skeleton of the historic military engineers barrack ‘the Genieloods’ is covered with one layer of thin steel plates. The inner climate is therefore unsuitable for expositions, extremely hot in summer and too cold in winter. In the proposal the interior of the barrack is covered with sheets made of NASA-developed space-blankets. With this very light intervention summer heat is kept outside and the warmth produced by the floor heating in winter is kept inside. Because of the mirroring effect of the material the space is endlessly enlarged while the exposition can be viewed from the front, back and top. During in-between seasons (spring and autumn) the space blankets are mechanically winded up, exposing the original historical interior of the barrack back again......more

Museum Interior Design | Sterling Millwork | Farmington Hills, Michigan | inFORM Studio

Conceived as a museum of millwork, the interior forms within the office space are presented as artistic sculptures that are visually independent but collectively define space. Each artistic gesture is an avatar of the craftsmen's talent in a particular material or medium. The sculptures are holistic and penetrations within the sculptures are controlled by elements inherent to the sculpture itself. The insertions are intertwined to define space and provide cohesion between elements, while maintaining their individuality. The interior gallery imposes itself upon the exterior, eroding the northwest corner of the existing structure to form a new entry and picture window. Symbolizing a regenerative process similar to the peeling of skin, the exterior articulation embodies a stripping away of the old existing membrane, revealing a fresh layer beneath. Recladding the exterior soffit with patina copper panels and cladding the exposed wall surface with tarnished copper panels reveals the evolutionary attributes of construction materials. Simultaneously, the new exterior insertions allude to the exuberance of the interior when unified with the picture window, bringing the gallery to the street. The plan is composed to afford an observer from the exterior a view through the entire public space, with the reception area receiving special prominence within a framed aperture. ....more

Museum of Archaeology of Álava in Vitoria | Francisco Mangado

Location: Vitoria, Álava, Spain.

Total Area: 5,000m2 (55,000 sq.ft.)

Competition:
1st Prize Projects Competition

The basic form of the building is determined by its context and the continuity, both in terms of concept and program, which it establishes with the adjoining Palace of Bendaña, currently the Naipes Fournier Museum.

In the permanent exhibition halls, all horizontal surfaces, floors and ceilings, are very dark. The wood floor (almost black) and the continuous ceiling (also black) form a closed and dark ‘box’ or chest delimited by the facade walls clad externally in a folded skin of bronze sheet, with pieces that are superposed or stepped depending on the lighting needs.

But these dark spaces are traversed by white glazed prisms – round which the exhibition of pieces is organized – that shall draw light in from the roof at daytime, coming from an internal illumination in the darkness. These prisms shall be inlaid with graphics and information to describe the items, but beyond this pedagogical task, their light will speak of the adventure of interpretation, the metaphor that makes reference to light in a dark space,to the hope of being able to interpret aspects from our past.

Towards the interior of the plot, the access courtyard is configured by more transparent boundaries: it is the bronzed skin that opens up with constant rhythm allowing space to signal visitors into the exhibition areas. ....more

Museum Interior Design | Science Museum, Discovery World, Pier Wisconsin By La Dallman

Located in the Discovery World at Pier Wisconsin hand’s on Science Museum, this project is a permanent, interpretive exhibit of the Great Lakes watershed, the region’s greatest natural resource. The program weaves together historic, scientific, and topographic data conveying information such as weather patterns, geological history, animal life, and water movement. The program requiresthe integration of highly technical life support systems for aquatic and amphibious life, digital imagery, interactive displays, cartography, fossils, and real-time atmospheric data.

Describing two ecosystems of the terrain and sky, the design reveals opportunities to explore the intersection between man-made and natural systems-- illuminating the primordial relationship between earth and sky. Moving fluidly within the building’s column grid, the terrain and sky create cinematic views of the landscape beyond. Through a highly iterative design process in form-making and fabrication (marrying both high-tech and primitive technologies), the design mediates between the organic and the man-made, the physical and the atmospheric, the neutral, existing space and the flexible, complex insertion, the grounded and the celestial....more

Museum Interior Design | Votorantim,São Paulo By Metro Arquitetos

Located in a historical building in São Paulo central district, in the Ramos de Azevedo Square, we designed a space to show the history of the Votorantim group, focusing on the metals sector.

The objective of the design is to provide a sensitive experience and not just a support fot informmation: the material itself is the content. With an emphasis on materiality, we showed all the stages of the production process, from the extraction of the mineral in its most raw state until the production of the thinnest sheet, incorporating as well the intermediate stage which are normally omitted. That materiality was also tensioned by the use of raw materials worked on with advanced technologies: solid blocks and sheets cold cut with water jet following CAD designs, complex geometries such as the twisted ellipses made of rods, aluminum plates cut with conforming the organic shape of the ceiling.

Another aspect emphasized by the exposition is the territorial dimension of the company, in two ways: the extensive network established between the places of production, distribution, and the logistics involved, which today has a global dimension; and the degree of physical intervention on the site, with the extraction, the building of dams, the installation of large factories and of enormous transportation lines and the consequent challenge that is continuing this evolution in a sustainable, social and environmentally responsible way....more
Date: 2007
Completion of construction: 2008
Architecture design:
Martin Corullon, Anna Ferrari e Gustavo Cedroni
Paloma Delgado e Paula Mendonça [colaboradores]
Construction area: 592 sq ft (550 m²)
Management of projects and construction: Carlos Lensoni
Lighting design: Ponto Elétrico - Ricardo Heder
Graphic design: BVY arquitetos associados, Cássia Buitoni
Air conditioning: Cold-Express

Photographs: Leonardo Finotti