Writing about the exhibition, I have to mention the building itself, where it was located. The Museum Aan De Stroom is a well-known project of a famous architects Willem-Jan Neutelings and Michiel Riedijk, whose works are extremely influential. The building is a museum that tells a story about Antwerp city. Every level of the building is a separate exhibition. Each exhibition has its'own topic related to Antwerp, Belgium and history. First of all, when you see this huge construction with a strange intertwine stairs and a red colour of the facade, you can not really imagine what is inside. The symbol of Antwerp (hand) sits on every third stone of the facade . The same situation is in the inside of the building, there are the same amount of silver coins everywhere - on the walls, on the floor. Glass windows have an unusual shape of a wave, which is symbolically, because Antwerp is a port city. Inside the building everything is arranged in such a way that you either climb to the highest level and then start your journey; or start from the ground and finish on the viewpoint.
On each floor artists and designers presented installations devoted to sport, which made the space more fun to observe, while taking the escalator. So, each floor had each feature. I must add that the circulation of the exhibition, stands for the exhibits made with such precision and accuracy that you can not stop wondering. From the many exhibitions I chose two most interesting to look at. The first exhibition was devoted to various ships and vessels, from the oldest to the most recent ones. This ships were made extremely accurately by hands, with every detail. The second thing I drew attention to was stands for the ships. It was just a simple usual wooden pallets stacked in several layers and despite such simplicity it looked perfect and fitted to overall atmosphere. Third thing - they used a huge forms filled with sand on the exit of the exhibition. It was kind of entertainment for people. They wrote the wishes, lowered it into the bottle and buried it. As a result, every level of the building had the same entertainment, but with different themes.
The second exhibition was devoted to the various tribes and people. Again, I liked the design of the space. There was a shaped wooden wall painted with white in the middle of the room and thereby it made a space inside for more statues and pictures. But the most fascinating was a huge statues made of transparent material. Different spirits and people were engraved there. There was light from the bottom and top, that made incredible glow.The huge wooden constriction with a lot of finger joints was kind of floating in the air.Every statue had a different stands, which were accurately painted with dark colour and finish. This stands overall made a one big atmospheric exhibition, light came through wooden pieces and made the entire space look very miracle.
by Maria Mamykina
MAC serves as a nice and typical instance of Neutelings Riedijk Architects: details, patterns, efficient use of small spaces.
ReplyDeleteThe building itself is a tower 60 meters high. The shape of it reminds giant natural stone boxes demonstrating the importance of history. Each floor of the tower is twisted a quarter turn, so that creates a huge spiral staircase. This spiral creates space around, which is bordered by a wall of corrugated glass. Escalators leads visitors from the area to the top of the tower. On each floor there are rooms with ehxibits. At the top of the tower are a restaurant, a party room and a panoramic terrace.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteMaria, thanks a lot for the post! This building is really interesting and other work of Neutelings Riedijk Architecten are great. The heavy-handedness and clear forms of this building with its wonderful warm brown Indian stone perfectly match with its purpose - to be a museum.
ReplyDeleteBy the way some top elements, actually rectangular holes at the top of of the museum, color and square structure of the facade stone reminds widely known small museum at Red square in Moscow.
Dina Gordienko Level 4