De Young Museum // Herzog & de Meuron
© Iwan Baan
precedent analysis
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The De Young Museum, designed by Jacquies Herzog & Pierre de Meuron, was proposed as an addition to the city of San Francisco to be a museum distinctful in nature for its array of artwork. The museum never intended to become a museum devoted to one genre, but rather a museum gifted in its approach to art as an assortment for the viewers who occupy it.
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approachThe original approach for the museum insisted on several pavilions spread through Golden Gate Park, each containing art within its boundaries. Soon enough, the concept evolved to keeping the work beneath one shared roof, located just North West of Renzo Piano's California Academy of Sciences. They took a concept from ones own hands, and how hands can interlock and connect with each other, translating to how the museum itself can do such a task within the park and amongst its surrounding context. The interlocking action of fingers was used to shape the interior spaces, then using the points of interlocking to be dedicated open courtyard space.
façadeTreating the façade was nothing short of a unique take on an exterior cladding system. The museum is covered in glazing and custom-made copper panels that play on porosity and light within the structure. Each malleable panel formed by hand, individual from the next, is cut, bumped, and dimpled; all thousands of them. Together they form a mosaic interpretation of light for the observer. The choice to use copper was that eventually in time, the weathering of the copper would cloak the museum in a patina corrosive mask, thus making the museum a seamless addition to the park surrounding it.
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© Iwan Baan
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education tower
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For being a vertical extrusion from the museum to the sky, the Education Tower became the final interlocking link between the museum, park, and the city. Composed of eight levels, the apical floor plate is dedicated to being an observation deck for viewers to survey the park and city. The remaining floors serve educational purposes with vertical circulation along the façade of the tower. In addition, the design of it is directly a shift of each floor plate which in turn creates an illusive perception of the tower physically "twisting" upwards.
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© Iwan Baan
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