National Museum of Art, Architecture & Design

Year: Spring 2021, Harvard GSD, Instructor: George Legendre Location: Paris, France Type: Art Museum

The design for this museum is centered around the archival space of the museum. There are 3 imperfect circles in this project. Each one occupies one of the three levels of the Museum, the profiles of those circles hold the archival space for the Museum’s collections, and are the main designator of space in the otherwise loose exhibition bounding box. The sub level and ground floor hold flat archival space, while the third is designated for object storage. The round archive takes precedent from the 1928 Stockholm Public Library, whose main circular level of book stacks was one of the first to allow guests to have direct access to the stacks without the help of a retrieving librarian. The geometry of the plan meant that everyone in the room was visible - a crucial factor for the major shift in public usability. This project pushes that interface further, and strives to make the archive an acting member of the spatial configuration of the site. Rolling tracks continue along the entire curve, so as museum curators and conservators exercise the space, gallery flow and layout change in response. Racks that are pulled slightly out can also be viewed by museum visitors so that the strip of archival space can be programed as an exhibition in itself.