New Forms Taschen 077

A new Generation of Museums

Europę Leads the Way

Throughout the 1980s, and into the early 1990s, a wave of museum construction swept across Europę, and certainly concerned Japan, if only to a lesser degree the United States. The reasoning behind this trend is relatively elear. Whereas the great cathedrals of the past may have been potent symbols of the wealth or importance of European cities, culture seems to have replaced religion as the most obvious sign of success. France, under Franęois Mitterrand, engaged in an unparalleled series of cultural projects, known as the Crands Travaux. The most visible, and perhaps the most significant of these efforts was undoubtedly the Louvre Pyramid designed by theChinese-born American architect I.M. Pei. Bornin 1917inCanton,Peiwascalled on directly by President Mitterrand, without any prior competition, to redesign the "greatest museum in the world." Morę than a central entrance, the Louvre project entailed the development of a master-plan for the expansion of the museum into the vast areas of the Richelieu Wing, long occupied by France's Ministry of Finance. Quite obviously, a royal pałace such as the Louvre is not the ideał location for a museum of art, if only because of its U-shaped layout, requiring long walks between the different wings. This fact led I. M. Pei to condude that the only possible location for the new entrance would have to be at the center of the structure. Long used as a parking lot, the so-called Cour Napoleon became the heart of the Grand Louvre. In its first phase, completed in 1989, the Grand Louvre project entailed the erection of the now famous pyramid, but also the construction of large underground areas to accommodate the facilities such as shops, restaurants and auditoriums, which were sorely lacking until that time. Although politically oriented protests greeted the an-nouncement of the project, the French public came to accept the pyramid as the newest of a long linę of great Parisian landmarks. Criticized in particular for his lack of apparent sympathy for the surrounding nineteenth century architecture, Pei explained that the pyramid design was in fact deeply rooted in French tradition. Citing his personal admiration for the garden designer Le Nótre, responsible for the nearby Tuileries gardens, Pei pointed out that two essential elements of Le Nótre's garden designs had in fact been sky and water. With the basins ringing the pyramid, and its own reflective surface showing the image of passing clouds, the new addi-tion was in reality a subtle blend of geometrie modernity and tradition.

Perhaps because of his background as an able designer of commercial projects in the earlier part of his career, Pei has never been as fully accepted by the American architectural establishment as his achievements would warrant. Few in the United States seem to have fully understood the extent to which the Grand Louvre project, with its second Richelieu Wing phase completed in 1993, represents one of the greatest architectural accomplishments of the late twentieth century. Not only did I.M. Pei succeed here in giving appropriate form to Franęois Mitterrand's ambition to place culture at the heart of France's political agenda, but he also mastered the extremely delicate equilibrium that had to be obtained between the symbolic weight of a great historical monument and the requirements of the modern age. The

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