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
| Apr 17, 2012
Princeton Review releases “Guide to 322 Green Colleges”
The guide profiles 322 institutions of higher education in the U.S. and Canada that demonstrate notable commitments to sustainability in their academic offerings, campus infrastructure, activities and career preparation.
| Apr 17, 2012
FMI report examines federal construction trends
Given the rapid transformations occurring in the federal construction sector, FMI examines the key forces accelerating these changes, as well as their effect on the industry.
| Apr 17, 2012
Freese and Nichols awarded Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award
Freese and Nichols is the only engineering and architecture firm to ever receive this recognition.
| Apr 17, 2012
Miramar College police substation in San Diego receives LEED Platinum
The police substation is the first higher education facility in San Diego County to achieve LEED Platinum Certification, the highest rating possible.
| Apr 17, 2012
Alberici receives 2012 ASA General Contractor of the Year award
Alberici has been honored by the ASA eight times in the award’s nineteen-year history--more than any other general contractor in its class.
| Apr 16, 2012
Freeland promoted to vice president at Heery International
Recently named to Building Design+Construction’s 40 Under 40 Class of 2012.
| Apr 16, 2012
University of Michigan study seeks to create efficient building design
The result, the researchers say, could be technologies capable of cutting the carbon footprint created by the huge power demands buildings place on the nation’s electrical grid.
| Apr 16, 2012
UNT lab designed to study green energy technologies completed
Lab to test energy technologies and systems in order to achieve a net-zero consumption of energy.
| Apr 16, 2012
Shawmut awarded Tag Heuer builds in Florida and Pennsylvania
Both projects are scheduled to be completed this spring.
| Apr 16, 2012
Batson-Cook breaks ground on senior living center in Brunswick, Ga.
Marks the third Benton House project constructed by Batson-Cook.
