The brief for this travelling exhibition, about museums recently built or planned, was very simple. It requested the design of pedestals, to set up the models on display. The work evolved onto the spatial layout of the entire contents within Culturgest, a cultural foundation in Lisbon. The exhibition was arranged according to geographic regions – Europe, Japan, Australia, America – and a timeline. It started with the Museumsinsel in Berlin as an early paragon of this typology, ending with the Eyebeam Museum in New York, by Diller Scofidio, and a digital update of this kind of institution. In the end, the pedestals were white drum-like props built in plywood. They resembled the shafts of classical columns, while the plexiglass cases of the models formed the capitals and a “colonnade of museums.”
Date: 2007 | Location: Lisbon, Portugal | Client: Culturgest | Architecture: Patrícia Barbas, Diogo Lopes