SPOTLIGHTING THE TOP museums OF 2022

From adaptive renovations and climate-regulating structures to monumental buildings and irregular volumes, 2022 saw the opening of many exciting museums and cultural centers. During the year, designboom reported on several highly-anticipated projects by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), Kengo Kuma Associates, Olson Kundig, and many more. Despite varying briefs and locations, our TOP 10 list of the biggest and best museums of the year features bold designs that will attract visitors from around the world.

We continue our annual review of this year’s BIG stories with a look at the TOP 10 museums and cultural venues featured on designboom in 2022.

BIG ADDS A CURVED CORTEN STEEL CORNER TO NEW REFUGEE MUSEUM OF DENMARK

image © Rasmus Hjortshøj

Bjarke Ingels Group / BIG has designed a museum dedicated to refugees in Oksbøl, at the site of Denmark‘s largest refugee camp from World War II. Named ‘FLUGT’ the new cultural building gives a voice and a face to refugees worldwide and captures the universal challenges, emotions, spirit, and stories shared by displaced humans.

‘The Refugee Museum of Denmark explores an important part of our history and a theme that is more relevant than ever, with millions of refugees currently displaced from their homes,’ says Bjarke Ingels.

For this adaptive reuse project, BIG transformed and extended one of the camp’s few remaining structures—a hospital building—into a 1,600 sqm museum.

GLENSTONE MUSEUM ADDS NEW BUILDING DEDICATED TO SINGLE NEW WORK BY RICHARD SERRA

image © Glenstone Museum

Glenstone Museum in Potomac has opened a new Thomas Phifer and Partners-designed building to house the sculpture Four Rounds: Equal Weight, Unequal Measure, 2017, by Richard Serra. Designed in collaboration with the artist, the 4,000-square-foot concrete structure is the first new construction on the museum’s grounds since the opening of the pavilions in 2018.

The new building marks an addition to the overall collection of austere and minimal pavilions sited in Maryland and all realized by Thomas Phifer and Partners.

OLSON KUNDIG WEAVES TOGETHER THE COMPLEX LIFE AND WORK OF BOB DYLAN IN TULSA

image © Matthew Millman

Olson Kundig celebrates the completion of the Bob Dylan Center, a project combining immersive exhibition design and restoration all spanning a whole block in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The space occupies a 100 year-old building that was once a paper factory, a context which plays a great role in the all-American spirit of the project.

This was an international design competition which partners Alan Maskin and Tom Kundig pursued jointly — it proved to be the perfect match as Olson Kundig is one of the few firms in the world that specializes in both architecture and exhibit design. Actually this wasn’t the team’s first proposal. The original design proposed an entirely new building which fused the exhibits with newly built architecture. Shortly after the group was awarded the project five years ago, the warehouse space — a former gallery adjacent to the Woody Guthrie Center — had become available and a new piece of architecture was not needed. Since that moment, the team focused entirely on exhibit design.

In the early stages of the process, it was announced that Bob Dylan himself — who is just celebrating his 81st birthday this Tuesday, May 24th — would not be involved in the project. ‘I was actually incredibly relieved,’ Alan Maskin told designboom, ‘because I didn’t want to make a monument to a rock star. I wanted to use the example of his life and career and his creative trajectory as an example for others.’

ESTUDIO MMX INFUSES NEW GEOLOGY MUSEUM IN MEXICO WITH MAYAN ARCHITECTURE REFERENCES

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image courtesy of Dane Alonso

Designed by Estudio MMX, the new Geology Museum in the town of Progreso, on the coast of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, is entirely covered in chukum, a natural finish of Mayan origin. Composed of multiple structures, corridors, gardens, and fountains, the ensemble combines the ideas of Mayan architecture with the colonial heritage of urban design, while light, shadow, and vegetation blend in to create a rich experiential character.

‘The museum consciously synthesizes local Mayan knowledge with contemporary architectural approaches, thus generating a new identifiable and appropriable public space for the people of Progreso.’ shares the Mexican studio.

KENGO KUMA’S IRREGULAR ALUMINUM-CLAD FACADE INVITES VISITORS TO ALBERT KAHN MUSEUM IN FRANCE

image ©︎ Michel Denance

On the outskirts of Paris, the new Albert-Kahn art museum has opened its door to the public following the rehabilitation work and realization of a new building by the renowned architect Kengo Kuma. An envelope made from irregularly placed aluminum strips catches passersby’s attention from afar and endows the spaces with a play of light and shadow. The uneven aluminum roof that tops the structure reflects the nuances of the sky and welcomes visitors to discover the vast Kahn collections in a unique architecture of 2300 sqm.

The final design reveals a strong conceptual element that sees a reinterpretation of ‘Engawa’, a traditional physical medium of Japanese architecture. The meaning of Engawa is ‘in-between space’, and describes a filter between the inside and the outside. Thus, the design team sought to blend architecture and landscape, creating a seamless symbiosis between the display space and tame nature — an intention that is reinforced by lush gardens that pierce the building.

A SHIMMERING COPPER FACADE WRAPS THIS PRIVATE ART GALLERY BY CHYBIK + KRISTOF

image © monolot

CHYBIK + KRISTOF unveil its newly designed Private Art Gallery, defined by its shimmering facade of moveable copper tiles. The work is planned for the center of a new public square with direct access to the waters of a meandering river nearby. With this prominent waterfront position, as well as its location along a major pedestrian access between two important areas of the city, the gallery will have a significant impact on the urban fabric. This significant presence within the city and respect for the area’s heritage are the spirit of the proposal.

WUTOPIA LAB’S MONOLOGUE ART MUSEUM IN CHINA OFFERS AN ESCAPE FROM WORLDLY DISTRACTIONS

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image © CreatAR Images, Seven W

Shanghai-based architecture firm Wutopia Lab has completed the ‘Monologue Art Museum‘ in China, dedicated to those who desire an escape from worldly distractions. Settled in the park of SEATOPIA in Beidaihe, Qinhuangdao, the project emerges as an ensemble of three geometrical masses floating on a pool, all encircled by a white ring . The design team sought to generate an intimate and silent space where visitors could contemplate or hide their thoughts.

‘In an open green space at the intersection of three residential clusters in the Weilan Coast campus, I broke up the 1,300 square meter building into different monoliths combined with walls, corridors, and ambiguous spaces into a triangular-shaped 3,600 square meter place, the Monologue Art Museum.’

STUDIO GANG UNVEILS NEW IMAGES OF ITS GILDER CENTER AT NEW YORK’S NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM

The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York announces plans to open the Studio Gang-designed Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation. The sculptural new center is expected to open February 2023, and will transform the experience of the entire museum. The space will advance public science education for all ages at a time when the role of science in addressing society’s most pressing issues is urgent.

BUNDANON’S NEW ART MUSEUM AND BRIDGE FOR CREATIVE LEARNING ARE BUILT TO ENDURE CLIMATE CHANGE

Bundanon – a reimagined art destination situated near Nowra in the city of Shoalhaven, Australia – will be opening its new art museum and bridge for creative learning to the public on Saturday 29th January 2022, with an official ceremony and festival of events being held on Saturday 5th march 2022.

Embedded within the landscape, the new 500 sqm museum, designed by Kerstin Thompson architects (KTA) will present a year-round program of exhibitions of modern, contemporary, and first nations art, as well as new commissions. Drawing inspiration from rural Australia’s trestle flood bridges, the design responds efficiently to current and future climatic conditions — the 160-meter-long bridge allows floodwaters to flow beneath it, while the art museum is concealed inside a hill to protect itself against heat and wildfires. The project is a collaboration between KTA, landscape architects Wraight Associates with Craig Burton, and sustainable design engineers Atelier Ten.

NEW IMAGES UNVEILED OF DUBAI’S LARGER-THAN-LIFE ‘MUSEUM OF THE FUTURE’

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Following the completion of Killa Design’s calligraphy-covered Museum of the Future in Dubai, founder of the UAE-based studio Shaun Killa discusses the processes that informed the architecture. These new insights come alongside new images of the monumental work of both the completed exterior and larger-than-life interiors (see designboom’s previous coverage here).

From the outside, the museum sits atop a green hill, appearing as a sculptural object in the city. The geometry takes shape as a torus wrapped in massive calligraphic writing which express quotes from the UAE’s prime minister on his vision of the future.