Stockholm Museum of Contemporary Art

Year / 2012
Location / Stockholm, Sweden
Building Type / Art Museum
Building Area / 1,027,380 sf
Construction / Folded Plate
Status / GSD Project
Advisor / Farshid Moussavi

As contemporary museums continue to be act as the crown jewel in many urban schemes, the museum as a programmatic type is increasingly important to study. What type of responsibility does the museum have to the general, non-paying public? These external pressures force an internal rethinking of the museum. Further, increases in what constitutes contemporary art has forced the museum to react, producing more diverse display spaces with greater levels of flexibility. The age of a single curatorial space, championed by Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum, is over. But how does one create spatial variety while at the same time maintaining flexibility?   

    The program for this project is large. Hence, it will never be consumed in one visit and thus must provide multiple curations at a single time. This project is about shortening the experience of the museum while not reducing its overall flexibility. At this scale, a “field” is implausible because of the museums need for interconnectivity. Similarly, the object is irresponsible because of its massiveness in the park.

    We propose not a field nor an object, but a field-object. A Field-Object respects difference and independence yet promotes interconnectivity and institutional singularity. A Field-Object can benefit from the expectation and organization of the field while still producing the figure of the object. Positioned in a park, it is both a thoroughfare and a destination, the path and the end point.