Non-Neutral Ambience

Across the street from one of Louis Kahn’s first major projects—the Yale University Art Gallery extension—a long queue waited to enter the packed Yale Center for British Art—one of his last—for the latest event in a series dedicated to museum design. This evening’s lecture continued the 1999 conversation published by 2G as “The Tension of Not Being Specific,” with the same renowned protagonists.

Tod Williams reasserted his preference for unbound spaces, with provocative statements about their categorization: “How do you distinguish a house, let’s say, from a museum?” Despite splitting those two literally, Peter Zumthor connected them metaphorically, talking about the use of exposed concrete walls and natural side-lighting to create a non-neutral ambience and perception of the collections; “It’s nice to make a home for certain homeless objects.” Billie Tsien played the lucid and poignant mediator, often with the presence she assigned to a museum’s building: “It needs to be brave enough to be quiet.”

[Editor’s Note: Williams and Tsien are NYRA sponsors.]