Architects rethink and reinterpret one of the most important and innovative typologies of recent decades: the museum.

Architects have been reformulating the experience of the museum and art itself, transforming the museum’s definition: 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 a protagonist; the new wing of the American Museum of Natural History in New York reimagines the institution with organic forms, as a bridge over the philosophical divide between culture and nature; the Hangzhou National Archives of Publications and Culture is built as an imitation of an art piece, to be an immersive experience of history and culture; the upcoming Cartier Foundation in front of the Louvre in Paris, with its mobile giant platforms, expresses the needs for dynamic architecture to be the site of the invention of culture.

Through this analysis, the museum of the twenty-first century emerges as the most important site of experimentation for architecture and art. The essential role of the museum—as an enabler of a different kind of encyclopedia, as a necessary place in our cities in its potential to call into question the dichotomy between the urban and the wild, or as withholding a democratization potential in including new forms of technology as forms of knowledge and culture—is catalyzed through architecture. Only through the museum can we understand what art is and what its growing role in our future urban environment might be.

About The Author

Béatrice Grenier is a Paris-based curator, writer, and editor. As the director of strategic projects at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, she is currently working on the institution’s architectural project for its new headquarters in Paris.