More and more metropolitan communities are commissioning big designer names to build museums as significant economic and cultural investments that are symbolic of their economic and cultural future. From Richard Meier’s Getty Center in Los Angeles (representative of a Modernist Acropolis) to Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, (a contemporary essay in non-linear science and technology), the art museum as a significant public symbol is a practice that seems be on a roll! Other museum projects in the United States that recently have taken place include Steven Holl’s addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Renzo Piano’s addition to the Art Institute of Chicago, Tadao Ando for the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and the new interiors of the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco by Gae Aulenti.

While shape, size, color, and mass include the formal elements that our senses perceive when first experiencing and interpreting the exterior and interior architecture of these dynamic museum structures, it is the underlying idea revealed by their formal aspects that symbolizes an artistic and intense humanistic perspective that is the qualitative rather than the quantitative measure of the community. This idea is well conceived in the 1960s book Brooklyn Bridge: Fact and Symbol where author Alan Tractenberg establishes the Brooklyn Bridge as a powerful cultural symbol capable of influencing art and literature and capable of yielding insight into the worldview of people of a particular time. The use of technology or specific applications of technological material used in creating such edifices reflect more that a specific location in time and space, but a place of mind in the collective opinion and imagination of the culture of the community (Schlereth, 1982).

In systematic terms, technology is defined as a branch of knowledge that deals with the industrial arts and engineering. The first step in technology is in the selection and application of materials. For example, ancient Greco-Roman Classical Architecture used the arch and concrete technology that enabled construction ranging from the basilica plan to massive infrastructures that included complex public and private spaces. The Romans’ use of local materials, or vernacular technology, also allowed them to build quickly and economically. This is one of the ways that the Roman Emperors used technology to conquer the known world; consequently the Roman arch has become symbolic of their power.

The selection of vernacular technology is seen more recently in the work of Aldo Rossi, who, along with French architect Xavier Fabre, designed the Center for Contemporary Art on the small island of Vassiviere, France. The Center for Contemporary Art is a small gemstone nestled quietly into the French hillside. Here, the important relationship of the natural environment in harmony with human experience and the built environment begins with the architects’ selection of local material and readily available modern technology. Completed in 1988, the facility is made of two parts –- a long, gable-topped gallery and a tower. The tower’s light house imagery links the museum to the lake. The tower reinforces the verticality of the surrounding trees while the horizontal building repeats the surrounding lowlands of the province. The facility is built of a simple steel skeleton with masonry and detailed with brick veneer. The intent of the architects was to use vernacular technology to create a strong typological and morphological space that symbolizes the spirit and sensibility of the Provincial French community.

The interior gallery is functional and devoid of unnecessary ornament. It promises usefulness and a multitude of activities. The rectangular interior plan and use of clerestory windows to allow for light recalls historic form as seen in the basilica plan. It was the architect’s intent to bring these classical types back into the modernist vocabulary using twentieth century technology. Similar in form and order, the interior of the art gallery and basilica plan both share a rational approach. Whereas ancient arches had to be made of considerable thickness to resist tensile stresses, the advent of new technologies as evidenced in Rossi’s gallery resist tensile stresses so that larger spans with more graceful outlines can be built. The simplicity of this interior is an eloquent and understated use of contemporary technology.

The space exemplifies how contemporary materials and building technology begin to create a new symbol and sense of place that evokes an internal human memory and meaning quite independent of ancient history. (Go to
http://www.aventuriers.com/fr/france/limouosin/87_dec_museevassieviere/index.shtml
and http://www.portail-regional.com/dos_tour/tour_vassiviere.htm for images of the center)

Whereas the architects of the Vassiviere Center for Contemporary Art use vernacular technology to signify and create a sense of place for a provincial community, the architect of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art uses building technology as a symbol of protection and preservation, information and clarity, and contemplation and enjoyment for a large urban community. Completed in 1995, it was the first commission in the United States by the internationally acclaimed Swiss architect Mario Botta. It is located across from the Yerba Buena Gardens and Art Center and, from this view; the building’s presence in the urban neighborhood can be appreciated. (go to
http://www.gingkopress.com/_cata/ima2/sfmoma-0.htm for images.)

Botta had to make the building “fit in” to a specific city lot; he however does not imitate the expanse of surrounding skyscrapers. Botta uses clarity and thought to continue in the distinct geometric language for which he is famous in his preceding works. Conceived in a modernist tradition of material technology, his language is minimal yet bold in form with richly textured brickwork. His vocabulary includes the circle, as expressed in the oculus and truncated striped tower that marks the building’s importance in the urban setting. The building is composed of wide oblong steps that emphasize volume. The bold stripes of gray and black granite, so significant in the tower, are repeated at the entrance columns and sides of the buildings.

At the entrance of the museum, a window strip slices through the cylinder moving downward to the lower façade. The sky lit tower serves as a visual and symbolic transition from the massive exterior to the 225,000 square foot interior. It supplies the central atrium court and surrounding galleries with an abundance of natural light. The architect’s control and manipulation of natural light is a technology within itself. Botta’s open space and use of natural light is an influence of the modernist architect Louis Kahn, with whom Botta apprenticed. While the artificial light used through out the galleries is required to be static, Botta’s use of natural light has a temporal quality: it is a light of change, mood, observation, and contemplation that signifies the museum’s intent. (go to http://www.mccullagh.org/image/950-22/sf-moma-top.html for interior images.)

The museum uses state of the art technology and climate control systems to conserve art and to house one of the most extensive collections of Modern Art in the world; in this sense, the serious block-like exterior fortress promises sound technology that will secure the city’s art investments. It symbolizes serious business; yet, as one enters the interior atrium, a human familiarity is revealed that is at first uplifting and, then, joyful, as one looks up to see engaged visitors walking across a cat walk that spans the atrium leading to an elevator shaft. The profusion of light and shadow from the circular skylight is juxtaposed to the square geometry of the five storied central staircase—it is exhilarating. The light is a revelation of the art exhibited within; it promises us of “things to come.”

The interior of the atrium repeats the exterior vertical striping; the stripes seem to float as they are repeated on the floor and, then, connect with a sea of light maple partitions and dado that signify entry into the galleries. This floating experience supports the reflective thought of the visitor and compels one to move from gallery to gallery. It is no wonder that the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has been praised as one of the best museum buildings of our time.

Three factors are often used to evaluate architecture: (1) function, does the building meet the needs of the users; (2) economy, is the building economical and well-constructed; and (3) beauty. Is the building beautiful? The answer to this last question is not always easy or objective. Technology is a design determinant that influences beauty and society’s perception of beauty. For example, there are building “types” that are considered to be beautiful because their technology offers socially accepted forms based upon historic evolution. When he designed buildings such as the Center for Contemporary Art, Aldo Rossi said that typology is a general design that becomes a basis for cultural action which generates a particular architectural form (Stein, 1991). Thus the basilica was the typology for his art museum model. In other words, Rossi relied upon a typology that had historic and cultural content. The basilica type is a symmetrical plan found in Roman cities and used as a public meeting hall. It began to take on new meanings as it evolved into different historic styles and models, notably the church plan. Therefore, the basilica type evolved into a model that is familiar and indigenous to the culture of Vassiviere. Because of its familiarity, the basilica type as art museum model may be used as a measure for identifying predictable architectural responses to models as being either “beautiful” or “not beautiful” based upon previous traditional response. Therefore, the basilica typology is safe and has value in its adherence to time-tested standards of beauty.

Botta also was influenced by classical architecture from the Italian Renaissance when designing the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His work however is a kind of post-modern classicism that rejects the classical Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders. Instead, he explores the layering of color, form, texture, and material found in examples such as the façade of Santa Maria Novella by Renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti. Botta’s exploration of Renaissance technology in the use of geometric form and articulation of horizontal details is exemplified in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; here it is accepted and considered beautiful in the collective mind of the community. (Go to http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/marian/marian.html for images of Santa Maria Novella)