What makes the Rotterdam-based MVRDV such a good firm is their ability to find the essence of any building commission (and some theoretical propositions), give that central idea a shape, and then construct it in a way that produces both a striking object and beautiful spaces. The firm has done this for social housing, for offices, for marketplaces, for libraries, and now for the art museum. The Depot— an art storage facility for Rotterdam's Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, which features medieval to contemporary art— is one of the most astonishing, and popular, cultural artifacts built in recent years.
The essence of an art museum is that it is a machine for bringing people and art together. In the traditional type of such structures, most of the space is dedicated to showing a small selection of the vast amounts of works of art that especially encyclopedic art museums hold. The remainder of the collections—often more than 90% of the total—are held in inaccessible vaults. The museum the public sees is then fleshed out with educational and visitor support spaces, with offices and other services remaining as hidden as the collections.
MVRDV has created a mechanism by which collections, as well as such functions as conservation and exhibit preparation, are condensed, stacked up, and made visible. They have eschewed both the idea that the museum is also a temple of culture and that it should therefore have a grand entry and circulation core, and also have eliminated display spaces used solely for that puropse. Instead, they offer a mirrored structure that slopes up from a rounded base to a large circle containing almost all the museum’s art, leaving a roof accessible for both viewing the surroundings and for a restaurant. The Depot’s outside is clad in mirrored glass, which turns the surroundings into a warped version of themselves, thus reproducing this section of Rotterdam as a work of art in and of itself. The building remains odd, enigmatic, and sculptural, evoking a bulging container and an abstracted modern building of a generic sort. Rotterdammers, fond of naming their structures, call it “The Pot.”
Inside the Depot, a circulation slot runs up from a very small lobby past layer after layer of storage space, some of which is immediately visible from the central atrium, and some of which is accessible through guided tours. A few of the museum’s more striking pieces are on display in glass-enclosed towers that rise alongside the stairs and elevators through the Depot’s core. The machinery of display, storage, treatment, and viewing are conflated into this bare and yet exhilarating condensation of everything that an art museum is.
The idea of “open storage” is not new. I will take the credit for creating the first such facility in Rotterdam 2005 for what was then the Netherlands Architecture Institute (now The New Institute)—where I was director from 2001 to 2006— at the nearby Van Nelle Factory, a Modernist landmark turned into a creative incubator. The Boijmans’ director, Sjarel Ex, told me he was more inspired, however, by the Schaulager, the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron’s facility for the Laurenz Foundation in Basel, Switzerland. Even before that, many museums have displayed some of their holdings in such facilities within their existing buildings.
What is new about the Depot is that it is purpose-built, containing virtually all of the Boijmans’ collection—151,000 artworks—and was designed from the beginning to be a permanent part of the museum’s display spaces. Even when the original museum building—which is currently closed while undergoing a multiyear renovation project—reopens, the Depot will retain a central function in how Ex foresees the institution operating. This is not only a functional decision: Ex points out that the format gives the Boijmans a chance to break out of the traditional hierarchies of art that have defined the discipline’s history as a succession of masterpieces, mainly produced by white men from the West, that must therefore always take a central part in the galleries. The Depot allows viewers to see a wider and more eclectic section of the collections. Moreover, the collage-like display that results from works being hung on racks or stacked in the atrium according to considerations such as year produced, medium, or even just where they fit, creates a wealth of juxtapositions and thus revelations about both the pieces and their relationships.
As a former museum director, I also marveled at the quality of the spaces, which combined the openness and clarity you usually experience in a display gallery with the flexibility for which you usually turn to storage. The state-of-the-art conservation studio and the able workshops also should be the envy of most museums. It turns out that cramming all the functions into a tight volume not only creates greater technical efficiencies, it also elicits feelings of shock and awe from visitors surrounded by the art.
That all of this is done in an object of such beauty makes the effort even more worthwhile. Of course, beauty remains subjective, but in the Netherlands almost every critic, as well as the huge crowds that have snatched up every visiting slot for months to come, have found themselves won over by the elegance of the continuously curving object. One longtime critic of the firm told me, after swearing secrecy, that even he liked the Depot. That MVRDV has learned in recent years how to detail their buildings with much more care than they applied to earlier structures makes the result even more convincing. If there is any quibble (other than some carping about how much maintenance all that glass will demand), it is that the structure takes up what was previous a public open space, albeit one that had been quite forlorn ever since a parking garage was constructed underneath it 10 years ago.
The Boijmans, meanwhile, is in turmoil. Ex has announced his resignation, partially as a result of the difficulties the museum is encountering in its renovation project. The city is in charge of what started as asbestos abatement but has turned into a process that will take years longer than anticipated.. Ironically, Ex has pointed out, the Boijmans is now more popular than ever, and the fact that what is meant to be its main building will be out of commission for at least another five years does not seem to bother its audience.
The Depot’s message for museums in general is that perhaps all that construction or renovation of ever more monumental gallery space should be up fordiscussion. An efficient, accessible, and beautiful museum for bringing as many people together with as much art in a way that produces enlightenment, surprise, and pleasure might be a better future model.
The views and conclusions from this author are not necessarily those of ARCHITECT magazine or of The American Institute of Architects.
