The last 15 years have been unprecedented in cultural architecture. Opera houses and high-profile museums have become the must-have signature buildings worldwide, just like cathedrals were once status symbols for medieval cities. What’s more, there’s a whole batch of important buildings yet to open their doors and this 21st-century flowering of cultural architecture isn’t showing any sign of tailing off just yet.
Brussels In June 2009, Brussels unveiled its new Magritte Museum, a conversion of one wing of the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts (
musee-magritte-museum.be) to house the biggest Magritte collection in the world. On the same day,in rural Louvain-la-Neuve, a new Hergé museum (
museeherge.com) by Pritzker Prize-winning Christian de Portzamparc was opened by the cartoonist’s widow.
Dublin
Daniel Libeskind (
daniel-libeskind.com) is one of the architects of New York’s Ground Zero. His dramatic Grand Canal Square Theatre in Dublin is running behind schedule but should be opening later this year or by early 2010.
Venice June 2009 also saw the unveiling of Punta della Dogana, the first major new contemporary art gallery in Venice since the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. Tadao Ando, who converted Palazzo Grassi (
palazzograssi.it) for billionaire François Pinault, also did this conversion.
Dallas Opening in October is a starry double bill of Norman Foster’s Winspear Opera House (
fosterandpartners.com) and Wyly Theater by Rem Koolhaas (
rex-ny.com/work/wyly-theatre). The architects bring a radical buzz and state-of-the-art environmental technology to downtown Dallas.
St Petersburg The Mariinsky Theatre courted controversy by employing the great Dominique Perrault (
mariinsky.ru) to design its radical extension. Likened to a pile of ‘golden refuse sacks’ by locals, the new Mariinsky is set to open by the end of the year.
Hamburg The towering new Elbe Philharmonic Hall is the work of intellectual celebrity architects Herzog & de Meuron (
designbuild-network.com/projects/elbe-philharmonic). Scheduled to open in 2011, this unusual building will house three concert halls, a five-star hotel, a conference zone and 47 owner-occupied apartments.
Kansas City
Celebrity architect Moshe Safdie (
msafdie.com) is the brains behind the new £190 million Kauffman Performing Arts Center, which will house a 1,900-seat ballet/opera house and a 1,800-seat concert hall when it opens in 2011.
Abu Dhabi Abu Dhabi’s new Saadiyat island (
saadiyat.ae) will have the new Guggenheim Abu Dhabi by Frank Gehry and Louvre Abu Dhabi by Jean Nouvel and the new Abu Dhabi Performing Arts Centre by Pritzker Prize-winning Zaha Hadid, which is scheduled to open in 2013.
Atlanta
Santiago Calatrava is the driving force behind a new Atlanta Symphony Center (
atlantasymphony.org/about/symphonycenter.aspx), which will be a cornerstone of the Woodruff Arts Center’s proposed Village for the Arts.
New York Set to be one of the talking points of the future, the New Globe Theater will be constructed inside Castle Williams on Governors Island in New York harbour. Its restaurant will have some of the best views of Lower Manhattan’s skyline.
Chicago In May, the £182 million Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago (
artic.edu) was unveiled. Created by Italian Renzo Piano, one of the world’s leading architects, it’s a 264,000sq ft, light-filled space with fantastic views of downtown Chicago.
