Museums Aotearoa Conference - Auckland 2007

DAY 3: Museums Aotearoa conference, Auckland Museum.











Have been here 30 hours so far. Typing this during the “Museum Architecture Function and Practice” session Friday morning.












I arrived at 9am for the start of Day 2 (Thursday) of this conference, to hear a presentation by Ian Athfield on the Christchurch Museum, Ken Gorbey on the Jewish Museum and Greg McManus director of the Rotorua Bathhouse museum and Jeremy Salmond conservation architects. Later, I heard an elegantly presented presentation by Richard Francis-Jones on his (Australian firm's) design for the refurbishment of the Auckland City Art Gallery. And later in the the day on Thursday, I had the privilege to get behind the scenes of Auckland Museum itself to see the new bits of Noel Lane's design for the refurbishment (rescue?) of the 1960s addition to the museum.

This experience and the Friday session so far has suggested the following ideas for modeling New Zealand museum buildings:
o Auckland Museum – the old and the refurbished (Noel Lane)
o Rotorua (Bathhouse) Museum – 19th C architect – design being ‘completed’ now
o Tauranga Art Museum – David Mitchell of Mitchell Stout architects
o The New Gallery in Auckland – David Mitchell of Mitchell Stout architects (too small?)
o Oamaru Athenaum (too small?)
o The Auckland City Art Gallery (Richard Francis-Jones)
o Canterbury Museum (Mountfort / Athfield?)
o Pataka in Porirua (Architecture +)
o The Dowse Art Gallery (Structon? / Athfield)

AUCKLAND MUSEUM: let’s leave aside the overheating of the top floor conference room in the Auckland Museum (who'd a thought that people would still be designing sloping glass under our sun without external shading?) The kava bowl analogy for the 'intervention' into the 1960s courtyard - now atrium in the Auckland Museum makes for an interesting modelling challenge in the Digital Craft course. Personally, I found the idea of the kava bowl better than the reality - the atrium was a true 'is that all there is?' experience.

I suggest that this building might be modelled by three people to deal with the complexity of the old / new parts. We will still have to deal with the takeover of the older parts of the museum (the 80 year old part) by the curatorial desire to shut out the outside light altogether - darkened rooms; theatrical effects in the words of this (Friday) morning's presentation 'privileging' the artefacts. The Digital Craft modelling exercise is about modelling forms in (day)light and the traditional daylighting of the old building has been closed in / over. Any model of this building for the course will have to work with the traditional daylit design options rather than how the building is used / lit now.



AUCKLAND CITY ART GALLERY: the East gallery in this building has a traditional top lighting scheme and has in a previous refurbishment been destroyed as even a gallery space. The plan is to redevelop this gallery. The plan is also to develop a new top lit gallery. The building has sufficient complexity to allow two people to model. The roof structure has an interesting sculptural elegance. The entry atrium / central focus and access organizer for the gallery visitor experience offers some fascinating potential for light / shade studies. I highly recommend this.

ROTORUA MUSEUM:This is a design that when it was presented troubled me immensely. The director was very proud to state that Resource Consent was obtained in 2 hours. When contrasted with the trials and tribulations faced by Ath with the Canterbury Museum the message seemed to be that to guarantee Resource Consent required a denial of architectural design: just copy a 100+ year old façade and paste it over the outside of a modern box – which is what happens in the Rotorua building.

The director suggested that their plan was merely to complete the original master plan for the building. However, it transpired that the internal planning of these new parts of the building are to be ‘modern’ adaptable gallery spaces – so: boxes that are clothed in 70 tonnes of totara to ‘fit’ with the existing design. Pasting / painting an historic pastiche onto modern boxes..?

That said, this looks to be a very interesting building to model…

CANTERBURY MUSEUM: Ath (Ian Athfield) described a 9 year process of what had been partly design joy and mostly Resource Consent process pain. The analysis he presented of the design was of a building that had been bastardized over an almost 100 year process. The proposed ‘interventions’ had a new modern glass box entry placed into the public face of the existing building, leaving the 80 year old portion intact and breaking into the 1950s kitsch copy of the older façade…

After 9 years the money raised has been given back. The process of restoration of function as well as simple addition has been abandoned. One was left with the distinct impression from contrasting this with the Rotorua experience that kitsch copying of the old is all that will be readily accepted by the community. The question that must be asked is: how has the architecture profession reached this nadir of trust in the general community? Why are architects so little trusted to adapt / alter buildings that the community will not tolerate work of the time, rather than pastiches of the past? People would look askance at someone copying / working in the style of another artist to add to an existing art work – a new panel to a McCahon triptych aping the existing panels anyone?

So little daylight. So little of any merit in the interior spaces to model that I am unsure that this building is suitable as a Digital Craft modeling exercise. Perhaps the atria in the proposed design could be done?

The NEW GALLERY and THE TAURANGA ART GALLERY: David Mitchell waxed lyrical about natural light. He suggested Velcro was a great solution to the problem of the ingress of unwanted light. I was reminded of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art – a stunning Mario Botta top lit gallery where black sail cloth with sailing technology fittings for the attachments are used to cover the skylights on the few occasions that darkness is really needed.

David presented two of his designs and some images as varied as John Soane’s gallery in Dulwich and Steven Holl’s Kiasma building in Helsinki. Almost all were characterized by large daylight openings between inside and outside. Unfortunately, I suspect both David’s designs are too small for modeling exercises within the Digital Craft course. They could be really elegant little exercises, but not collaborative projects between two or more people.

Pataka: Darcy Nicholas described success of the accessibility of the shopping centre nature of the thoroughfare plus stop off points ‘style’ of Pataka. Interestingly no mention was made of the architect / architecture in this discussion. I believe that this building is a little too simple and has too little daylight to be a successful Digital Craft model. Worth looking closely at the plans though.

The Dowse Art Gallery: Tim Walker’s contribution to the daylight debate at the Museums Aotearoa conference would suggest that this is not a particularly interesting building to model for the Digital Craft course. He suggested that the whole issue of natural light vs black box is ignoring the significance of the exhibition and claimed that the hip hop exhibition the Dowse ran recently could not have been done in natural light! I recall the old (Structon?) design had the daylight permanently excluded. This is one reason why the building has in the past not been modeled in the Digital Craft course. Now it may be different? Worth a look certainly.