描述

An analytic and profusely illustrated record of museum design through the 1980s, a decade which saw major architects developing increasingly sophisticated answers to the problems of display and conservation. Detailed analyses cover some 26 museums, among them Jean Nouvels’s masterpiece The Institute of the Arab World in Paris; Stirling and Wilford’s Clore Gallery in London; Gae Aulenti’s work at the Gare d’Orsay in Paris and the Museum of Catalan Art in Barcelona; Richard Meier’s Exhibition Centre in Ulm; Renzo Piano’s Menil Collection in Houston, and Aldo Rossi’s German History Museum in Berlin. Other architects featured include Norman Foster, I.M. Peil, Arata Isozaki, Frank Gehry, Kisho Kurakawa and Mario Botta. More than 60 museums are discussed and illustrated in the introduction, which looks at the relationships between the museum shell and the objects being exhibited and explains the growing complexity of museum design.