A jury representing the Mumbai City Museum has selected Steven Holl Architects as the winner of an international competition to design the museum's new wing.
Designboom reports that the jury included the director of London’s L&A Museum, and that it was selecting for Mumbai’s first international architectural competition for a public building. Other competitors included Zaha Hadid, OMA, and Amanda Levete.
The winning design involves building 125,000 sf of floor space, to be developed in white concrete and bringing in exactly 25 lumens of daylight to each gallery, Designboom reports.
At the center of the plan is a massive pool that will generate 60% of the museum’s electricity through photovoltaic cells underneath the water’s surface.
According to Designboom, Steven Holl Architects will now develop the initial design together with local practice Opolis Architects. Guy Nordenson & Associates will serve as structural engineers and Transsolar as sustainability consultants. Construction is expected to begin next year.
Steven Holl released the following news on the project:
Steven Holl was selected unanimously from 8 finalists including Zaha Hadid, OMA and Amanda Levete, to design a new wing for the Mumbai City Museum, also known as Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum.
The jury included Martin Roth, director of the V&A Museum in London, Tasneem Mehta, Managing Trustee & Honorary Director of the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Homi Bhabha, Director of the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard, Sen Kapadia, architect at Sen Kapadia Associates and founding director of the Kamala Reheja Vdyanidhi Institute for Conceptual Architecture in Mumbai, among other leading professionals of the museum world and academia.
Mumbai's oldest museum garden in Byculla will have a 125,000 sq ft new wing. The Mumbai City Museum's North Wing addition is envisioned as a sculpted subtraction from a simple geometry formed by the site boundaries.
The concept of "Addition as Subtraction" is developed in white concrete with sculpted diffused light in the 65,000 sq ft new gallery spaces. Deeper subtractive cuts bring in exactly twenty-five lumens of natural light to each gallery.
The basically orthogonal galleries are given a sense of flow and spatial overlap from the light cuts. The central cut forms a shaded monsoon water basin which runs into a central pool, related to the great stepped well architecture of India.
The central pool joins the new and old in its reflection and provides sixty percent of the museum's electricity through photovoltaic cells located below the water's surface. The white concrete structure has an extension of local rough-cut Indian Agra stone. The circulation through the galleries is one of spatial energy, while the orthogonal layout of the walls foregrounds the Mumbai City Museum collections.
Related Stories
Market Data | Feb 17, 2016
AIA reports slight contraction in Architecture Billings Index
Multifamily residential sector improving after sluggish 2015.
Architects | Feb 17, 2016
Developing a strategy for getting paid on time
Though talking about money can be difficult, creating and following a clear plan for getting paid is essential for your firm to thrive, writes Steve Whitehorn of Whitehorn Financial.
Architects | Feb 11, 2016
Stantec agrees to acquire VOA Associates
This deal reflects an industry where consolidation is a strategic necessity for more firms.
Market Data | Feb 11, 2016
AIA: Continued growth expected in nonresidential construction
The American Institute of Architects’ semi-annual Consensus Construction Forecast indicates a growth of 8% in construction spending in 2016, and 6.7% the following year.
Architects | Feb 11, 2016
AIA elevates 149 members and eight international architects to the College of Fellows
AIA Fellowship recognizes significant contributions to profession of architecture and society.
Architects | Feb 9, 2016
Architect faces prison sentence for VA medical center contract conspiracy
Admits to using inside information to gain VA contracts in Cleveland
Game Changers | Feb 5, 2016
London’s ’shadowless’ towers
Using advanced design computation, a design team demonstrates how to ‘erase’ a building’s shadows.
High-rise Construction | Feb 2, 2016
This tall tower will lower your heart rate
Matthias Olt, Associate Vice President at CallisonRTKL, discusses new ways to improve individual health and well-being through tower design.
Multifamily Housing | Feb 1, 2016
Top 10 kitchen design trends for 2016
Charging stations, built-in coffeemakers, and pet stations—these are among the top kitchen design trends for the coming year, according to a new survey of kitchen and bath designers by the National Kitchen & Bath Association.
Architects | Jan 28, 2016
25-year-old architect wins competition for World War I memorial in Pershing Park
Joe Weishaar and sculptor Sabin Howard were selected from among five finalists and over 350 entries overall.