The Louvre's New Islamic Galleries
Source: http://www.nytimes.com
#louvre #museum #france #paris #architecture #culture
When I. M. Pei's glass pyramid opened at the Louvre more than 20 years ago, many argued that this 21.3 meters tall structure had destroyed the classical beauty of one of the world's great museums. But today, as crowds wait on long lines outside the pyramid, which serves as the Louvre's main entrance, what once seemed audacious has become as accepted a part of the city's visual landscape as the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe.
Now the museum is again risking the public's wrath as it introduces the most radical architectural intervention since the pyramid in 1989. Designed to house new galleries for Islamic art, it consists of ground- and lower-ground-level interior spaces topped by a golden, undulating roof that seems to float within the neo-Classical Visconti Courtyard in the middle of the Louvre's south wing, right below the museum's most popular galleries, where the Mona Lisa and Veronese's "Wedding Feast of Cana" are hung.
This deftly engineered design is the work of two architects, the Italian Mario Bellini and the Frenchman Rudy Ricciotti, who won an international competition to create the new wing in 2005.
Seven years in the making, the US$ 125 million project, which opened on September 22. When the plans were first unveiled, the architects said, the roof resembled "a scarf floating within the space" - a somewhat loaded description, perhaps, considering that last year the French officially banned full veils in public places. The museum's "luminous veil," or "flying carpet" as it has also been called, covers some 2790 square meters of gallery space on the ground and lower floors. The new galleries, roughly four times as large as the space previously devoted to Islamic art at the Louvre, house a collection spanning 1,200 years of history, from the 7th through the 19th centuries, and includes glass works, ceramics, metalwork, books, manuscripts, textiles and carpets.
The roof is actually constructed of a free-form lattice composed of 8,000 steel tubes and glass covered by gilded metal. The undulating canopy contains the open floor plan gallery space where objects are displayed in glass cabinets. A large staircase descends to the lower level where natural daylight seeps in around the edges. A significant amount of work for the project required the team to excavate down 12 meters without disturbing the palace's original foundation. The result is a cavernous space reminiscent of a tent illuminated with a soft golden light.
Now the museum is again risking the public's wrath as it introduces the most radical architectural intervention since the pyramid in 1989. Designed to house new galleries for Islamic art, it consists of ground- and lower-ground-level interior spaces topped by a golden, undulating roof that seems to float within the neo-Classical Visconti Courtyard in the middle of the Louvre's south wing, right below the museum's most popular galleries, where the Mona Lisa and Veronese's "Wedding Feast of Cana" are hung.
This deftly engineered design is the work of two architects, the Italian Mario Bellini and the Frenchman Rudy Ricciotti, who won an international competition to create the new wing in 2005.
Seven years in the making, the US$ 125 million project, which opened on September 22. When the plans were first unveiled, the architects said, the roof resembled "a scarf floating within the space" - a somewhat loaded description, perhaps, considering that last year the French officially banned full veils in public places. The museum's "luminous veil," or "flying carpet" as it has also been called, covers some 2790 square meters of gallery space on the ground and lower floors. The new galleries, roughly four times as large as the space previously devoted to Islamic art at the Louvre, house a collection spanning 1,200 years of history, from the 7th through the 19th centuries, and includes glass works, ceramics, metalwork, books, manuscripts, textiles and carpets.
The roof is actually constructed of a free-form lattice composed of 8,000 steel tubes and glass covered by gilded metal. The undulating canopy contains the open floor plan gallery space where objects are displayed in glass cabinets. A large staircase descends to the lower level where natural daylight seeps in around the edges. A significant amount of work for the project required the team to excavate down 12 meters without disturbing the palace's original foundation. The result is a cavernous space reminiscent of a tent illuminated with a soft golden light.
