Louvre extension in Lens, France
This is a building that will take nothing away from the art.
Plus the way they arranged works will be interesting to see and compare on a time line by continent.
Give the video a shot.
The €150m (£122m) satellite of Paris's Louvre museum shimmers like an apparition on the raised plane of the former coalmine, looking down over streets of pitch-roofed miners' houses, dotted with the occasional chip shop. The building is formed from a series of long, low-slung walls that fade in and out of view as the changing light dances over its surface – or as clouds of drizzle engulf it entirely in the wintry gloom.
Despite being officially opened by President François Hollande on Tuesday, the project is not quite finished. At present it sits in a churning sea of mud, with crisp sheets of aluminium and glass rising out of a vision not unlike the nearby battlefields of the Somme. The surrounding scene of hurried planting and mechanical puttering only adds to the impression that this is a cluster of great agricultural sheds.
But, as closer inspection reveals, these are not any old sheds. They are meticulously designed by Sanaa, the Japanese architecture practice that has won acclaim for creating buildings that are barely there at all.
"There is a theme that runs through all of our projects," says Ryue Nishizawa, one half of the partnership with Kazuyo Sejima, "about how to open up architecture – to society, to the landscape – to form a seamless continuity between inside and out."
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2012/dec/05/louvre-lens-sanaa-art-museum
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