From industry to culture: Leftovers, time and material transformation in four contemporary museums

Journal of Architecture

Volumn 12, Issue 4, 2007, Pages 405-421

  Crisman, Phoebe ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 65849426905     PISSN: 13602365     EISSN: 14664410     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13602360701614698     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (40)

1. th edition (Orpington, George Allen, 1883), p. 194.
2. Ibid., p. 187. This phrase is an excerpt from Aphorism 30, where Ruskin states that the greatest glory of a building is in its age: 'it is in that golden stain of time, that we are to look for the real light, and colour, and preciousness of architecture.'
3. For a discussion of Ruskin's attitude towards conservation and its influence, see J. Jokilehto, A History of Architectural Conservation (Oxford, Butterworth-Heinemann, 1999), pp. 174-212.
4. Recent architects' attitudes toward weathering are discussed in M. Mostafavi and D. Leatherbarrow, On Weathering: The Life of Buildings in Time (Cambridge, MIT Press, 1993), p. 6.
5. The Bankside Power Station was designed by the architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, built in two phases between 1947 and 1963, and closed in 1981. The Swiss architects Herzog & De Meuron designed the renovation and Tate Modern opened in 2000. For more information and illustrations, see: R. Moore and R. Ryan, Building Tate Modern: Herzog & De Meuron transforming Giles Gilbert Scott (London, Tate Gallery, 2000);
6. I. Blazwick and S. Wilson, eds, Tate Modern. The Handbook (London, Tate Publishing, 2000); and the museum website at http://www.tate.org.uk/modern.
7. The original building was designed by the architect Louis Wirsching, Jr, and built in 1929. It was known as the National Biscuit Company Carton Making and Printing Plant. Situated along the Hudson River in Beacon, NY, the concrete frame structure has steel sash windows, immense skylights and maple floors. In 2003, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and opened for its new role by the Dia Art Foundation.
8. See L. Cooke and M. Govan, Dia:Beacon (New York, Dia Art Foundation, 2003) and the museum website at http://www.diabeacon.org.
9. Fritz Schupp and Martin Kremmer designed the boiler house between 1927 and 1932. After over 50 years of operation, the mine closed in 1986 and the British architects Foster and Partners converted the building into the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen (also known as the Red Dot Design Museum). See the Zollverein website at http://www.zollverein.de and the Red Dot Design Museum website at http://www.red-dot.de.
10. Twenty-six brick and heavy timber mill buildings were erected during 1860-1900 to house the fabric printing process. Sprague Electric Co. occupied the complex from 1942-85. The American architects Bruner/Cott & Associates designed the renovation and MASS MoCA opened in 1999. See J. Trainer, ed., MASS MoCA: From Mill to Museum (North Adams, MASS MoCA Publications, 2000) and the museum website at http://www.massmoca.org.
11. 'The Tales: Structures and Themes', The Burlington Magazine, vol. CXLII, no. 1169 (August, 2000), p. 479.
12. S. Zukin, Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change (New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 1989), p. 92.
13. 'What we do and why we do it...', MASS MoCA website at http://www.massmoca.org/mission.
14. I. de Solà-Morales, 'Terrain Vague', Quaderns d'Arquitectura / Urbanisme, 212 (1996), p. 37.
15. For elaboration on this term coined by the author, see P. Crisman, 'Site Out of Mind: a pedagogy for seeing + representing', in Encounters/ Encuentros/ Rencontres, D. Covo and G. Merigo, eds (Washington, DC, ACSA Press, 2005), p. 244-258.
16. A. Harris, 'Regenerating Bankside: art, urban space and power in millennial London', unpublished doctoral thesis, University of London (2005).
17. D. Massey, 'Bankside: International Local', in, I. Blazwick and S. Wilson, eds, Tate Modern. The Handbook, op. cit., pp. 24-27;
18. and D. Harvey, 'Foreword', in S. Zukin, Loft Living; Culture and Capital in Urban Change, op. cit., pp. ix-xii.
19. 'Leftover', The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 1560.
20. A. Huyssen, Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia (New York, Routledge, 1995), p. 5.
21. Ibid., p. 31.
22. A. Huyssen, 'Nostalgia for Ruins', Grey Room, 23 (Spring, 2006), p. 8.
23. A. Picon, 'Anxious Landscapes: From the Ruin to Rust', Grey Room, 01 (Fall, 2000), pp. 64-83.
24. Ibid., p.77.
25. Briony Fer elaborates on this strategy. 'At stake here is the formation of a certain kind of spectacle that we experience at the Tate...the museum has not just assimilated commodity culture, but the way in which commodity culture wants to emulate the museum now. It becomes a kind of driving force within the wider culture. The museum is no passive reflector, nor is it naive in relation to that culture. Far from it. It knows precisely what it's doing and is able to manipulate these events at the level of affect on a huge scale. In that, it follows a general tendency toward the spectacular museum.' See 'Round Table: Tate Modern', October, 98 (Fall, 2001), p. 15.
26. M. Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (New York, Praeger, 1966), p. 35.
27. For a discussion of material transience in contemporary arts and crafts, see L. Sandino, 'Here Today, Gone Tomorrow. Transient Materiality in Contemporary Cultural Artefacts', Journal of Design History, vol. 17, no. 3 (2004), pp. 283-293.
28. S. Iliescu, 'The Garden as Collage: rupture and continuity in the landscape projects of Peter and Anneliese Latz', Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes, vol. 27, no. 2 (April-June, 2007), pp. 149-182.
29. The Tate's Director, Nicholas Serota, described the initial response to the exterior brickwork by himself and the architect, Jacques Herzog: 'The first immediate response to the building is to scrub it down, make it clean and shiny, and it'll be bright and beautiful. But actually when you look into it you find the building was built in two stages, that there are slightly different bricks on the upstream side from the downstream side. If you clean it you're going to expose that. You're going to wash away a certain sense of the patina of history. And there's a danger that we'll get the whole thing so cleaned up it'll no longer be the building that we wanted or that we saw or that we were inspired by. Now, on the other hand, at the moment its message is somewhat gloomy, austere, dirty. How do we strike a balance between those two?'. K. Sabbagh, Power into Art. Creating Tate Modern, Bankside (London, Penguin Books, 2000), p. 54.
30. For a more comprehensive description, see 'Zollverein Coal Mine, Pit XII in Essen', Detail, vol. 37, issue 6 (1997), pp. 873-878.;
31. and P. McGuire. 'Ruhr Revival', Architectural Review, vol. 202, no. 1206 (1997), pp. 72-76.
32. M. Thompson, Rubbish Theory. The Creation and Destruction of Value (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1979). Thompson specifically discusses decaying buildings in his chapter, 'Rat-infested slum or glorious heritage?'.
33. See also J. Culler, 'Junk and Rubbish: A Semiotic Approach', Diacritics, vol. 15, no. 3 (Autumn, 1985), pp. 2-12.
34. L. Cooke and M. Govan, Dia:Beacon (New York, Dia Art Foundation, 2003), p. 63.
35. J. Perl, 'Oh, Cool', The New Republic (September, 2003), p. 229.
36. K. Davis, MASS MoCA Restrooms: A Postcard Portfolio (North Adams, MASS MoCA Publications, 2000).
37. See U. Eco, The Open Work (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1989).
38. R. Mason, 'Fixing historic preservation: a constructive critique of "significance"', Places, vol. 16, no. 1 (Fall, 2003), p. 68.
39. Although this paper does not examine the concept of nostalgia, it is worth noting that nostalgia need not only be viewed as an inherently futile and problematic sentiment. Svetlana Boym has made a strong argument for a nostalgia that enhances reflection and furthers the self. She accomplishes this by distinguishing between two types of nostalgia: restorative (that seeks to recapture lost things) and reflective (sensitivity to a fragmented and meaningful past). See S. Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York, Basic Books, 2001).
40. The entire mine complex was listed as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage industrial monument in 2001. The former Arnold Print Works site was listed on the US National Register of Historic Places in 1985.