OMA - Riga Contemporary Art Museum, Latvia, Riga, 2006

RIGA CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM, LATVIA, RIGA, 2006

Over the past 20 years two types of spaces have come to dominate the display of art:
1. The 'pristine white room', representing the view that the display of art is best served by an absence of context, allowing the work to 'shine' autonomously and be perceived in its own right.
2. The 'appropriated backdrop': often old industrial remains, which are to provide 'added drama' to the artwork. Such spaces have also in part accommodated a trend where the contemporary artwork has become increasingly extravagant and occasionally too big to be housed in traditional museum spaces.

The proliferation of these two types of spaces has progressed to the point where they have become virtual exhibition archetypes. Every new museum now seems to face an almost ideological choice between the two.

The premise of this project is precisely to negate such a choice. To avoid being a victim of history without resorting to its denial. It is an open secret that the presentation of art is not the only function of the contemporary Museum. The very success of the institution – a pivotal centre of contemporary society – has accrued additional interests and powers that require their own infrastructure, in addition, but independent from the viewing of art.

A new conceptual framework must be devised that accommodates both the museum's traditional function and incorporates the additional roles and expectations the museum has acquired. We imagine a museum in two parts, in the form of a complete mutual dependency with a maximum interface between them. The existing power plant houses the educational, media-related and production sections of the museum. It houses a variety of experiences from video to research to public programs and performances: organized around the art without necessarily implying a direct confrontation with the art objects.

The exhibition space and the museum shop are located in an extended perimeter surrounding the existing power plant: a single continuous neutral space with a flat roof and a glass façade, embedding the old in the new, making the powerplant work for the museum in a utilitarian rather than symbolic way.

The use of the existing power plant (also for all the required technical and logistical services) allows this space to be evacuated of everything that would interfere with the relation between the viewer and the art object. In this sense this design accepts and accommodates the museum's new functions and roles, but also restores the museum's classical role: the organized contemplation of art.

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