Bechtler Museum

Clad in a glazed terra cotta tile that lends it an orange hue and a sleek feel, the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art in Charlotte, North Carolina, shows Swiss architect Mario Botta shifting subtly from his signature brick and stone.

A mortar-free terra cotta rain screen clads the essential forms of the small museum. The massing block of a fourth-floor gallery reaches out over an entry plaza below, underpinned by a column wrapped in a double-tapered sheath of tiles.



The building's exterior surface combines flat, single-thickness tiles with tiles of triangular cross section, forming textured patterns and creating a play of light and shadow throughout the day. In using the terra cotta, Botta has described his concept of the building as a clay mass carved out by light.

The museum opened on January 2, 2010, as only the second building of Botta's in the United States, after SFMOMA (1995), although his work has flourished in Europe and Asia in the meantime.

Botta says he maintained the open area in an Italian piazza style to give people on the street a sense of being part of the structure. He also aimed to create the feel of a welcoming Southern front porch. Throughout the 36,500-square-foot (3,400-square-meter) building, one gets the sense of being integrated — aware of and able to see what's going on, both inside and out, from all four levels of the building.

6th Le Corbusier Research Center to be Built in India

The world is soon to have a new Le Corbusier research center/museum. It's been announced that the sixth such building will be constructed in Chandigarh, India, a city for which Corbusier laid out the master plan for in the 1950s. It's the second building in India, and it will feature a museum, like in all the other locations, but also plans to be a destination for architects and designers to work in their respective fields (though much more like a research library and most of it will have to do with the famous designer/architect himself). What's more, it will also be built to resemble and function in the way Le Corbusier would have likely wanted it designed, the planers hoping that it will resemble how things operated when the man was there working lo those many years ago.

Here's a bit:

The centre will be divided into six sections portraying the archival records, original plans, elevations, sketches and studies, maps and models, documents, photographs and furniture. Three rooms will serve as reception, reference and digital library with internet facility.

"We will establish a 'Chandigarh heritage conservation cell' for monitoring the conservation activity within the city. The materials that will be displayed in the centre will be collected on a permanent loan basis from various public, private and international institutions," he said.

The open courtyard would be used for the temporary exhibitions to promote ancient, medieval and Contemporary art and architecture in the region.

The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art

The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art located on the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus in Minneapolis, Minnesota has been a teaching museum for the university since 1934. The museum's current building, designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry, was completed in 1993.

It is one of the major landmarks on campus, situated on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River at the east end of the Washington Avenue Bridge. The building presents two faces, depending on which side it is viewed from. From the campus side, it presents a brick facade that blends with the existing brick and sandstone buildings. On the opposite side, the museum is a playground of curving and angular sandblaster steel sheets.

The most stunning views of the building are from the pedestrian and highway decks of the adjacent bridge. Some locals critical of the radical architectural style frequently point out that the building's design could unexpectedly reflect the light of the sun into the eyes of motorists on the bridge. Studies commissioned by MNDOT have found that the museum is not hazardous to motorists.

Often called a "modern art museum," the 20,000+ image collection has large collections of Marsden Hartley, Alfred Maurer, Charles Biederman, Native American Mimbres culture pottery, and Korean furniture.

McCormick Freedom Museum

Here's full view of the two storied sculpture at McCormick Freedom Museum...

One fundamental question that was a theme at the museum was ... "What does freedom mean to you?"

Visitors have the opportunity to enter the recording booth and record their own views about freedom ... and also have a chance to listen to what other visitors have to say!

The Denver Art Museum

The Denver Art Museum is an art museum in Denver, Colorado located in Denver's Civic Center. It is known for its collection of American Indian art, and has a comprehensive collection numbering more than 55,000 works from across the world.