Building type

Museum architecture

624 buildings

Museum architecture has to keep a collection safe and open it to the public, and every museum building strikes its own balance between the two. The word museum goes back to a Greek place dedicated to the Muses. Museums began as private collections; in France, the Louvre in Paris became the first public museum. Some museums move into old buildings that have outlived their use; others marry a new wing to an old one. Cities have also used museums as tools for economic growth.

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The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (1959), called a landmark of 20th-century architecture, replaces floors and rooms with one continuous spiral ramp around a skylit atrium. I. M. Pei's Louvre Pyramid in Paris (1989) lights an underground hall that links the museum's wings. Tate Modern in London (2000) turned a power station into a museum, its Turbine Hall an indoor street. Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao (1997) shaped its titanium curves with CATIA, aerospace software, and its pull on the city became known as the Bilbao effect. Study them for how visitors move, where light comes from, and what a museum does for its city.

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