Zaha Hadid and the lost Louvre
1 Comments Published by Cedric Benetti on Wednesday, February 20, 2008 at 2/20/2008 07:15:00 PM.
These are the views of Zaha Hadid*s entry to the competition of creating a new space for the Islamic arts department. Unfortunately Hadid*s entry was not the winner, supposedly because it may have looked too extreme to the more conservative Louvre people, so a more "standardised" design was chosen in the end.The Louvre*s collection of Islamic art is currently displayed on the lower ground floor of the Richelieu wing, in a very cramped and ridiculously small space, but will be transferred to newly created display areas in the Cour Visconti (Denon wing) over the next 5 years.
The Louvre, like the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, holds one of the most important Islamic Art collections in the world. The adjacent Decorative Arts museum owns another 3,000 objects that have not been shown in public for over 20 years. The 2 collections will come together in a two-story, 36,000 square-foot design by Milanese architect Mario Bellini and Rudy Ricciotti, a French architect.
Set to open in 2009, the $67 million project benefited from a $20 million donation from Saudi Prince Walid bin Talal.
Read this NYT article on the Louvre*s new islamic arts wing!
Labels: Architecture Instant Love, design, Louvre, MUSEUMS
thats some crazy shit