I had temporarily forgotten that the RIBA Journal had kindly said that they would reproduce the section of the book on ‘The Role of the Architect’ in which I have tried to summarise their changing role over time, based on the work that I had done in writing my case studies (43, unless I have miscounted). It’s necessarily a bit oversimplified and doesn’t include what I think of as the rogue element: Daniel Libeskind’s fine, symbolic Jewish Museum in Berlin; Zaha Hadid’s MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Art in Rome.
Ed Jones has suggested I should have included Rafael Moneo’s building for the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston – admittedly a good model of exemplary galleries for its permanent collection and Alvaro Siza’s Galician Art Museum in Santiago da Compostella. The list of those I need to visit is growing longer every day.
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 