The art museum in its most lyrical form still remains an external housing for forms of art that by definition attempt to outstep the bounds of their frames. For generations, the museum has been the limiting frame for the artists’ canvas. Artworks are created with the size of storage sheds, transportation carriers, goods lifts and gallery heights in mind. In the mind of the artist, the architectural space has been the pre-existing condition to which it must abide.

Art as installation, as public art and street theatre has quietly moved out of traditional art museums. It is time to reconfigure the museum typology to make it more accessible to the city. The museum itself must become a large canvas for the artist while providing the visitor multiple vantage points to engage with art.

We have approached the museum project as an archaeological site, self-aware and cognizant of its relationship to art and its role in the space of art. Its walls are not intended to create gallery rooms or even to simply allow art to find sympathetic grounds, but to recognize the presence of that which is ancient, and which has withstood war, strife and revolution. The museum in its participation in this arche-tecture, must allow itself to be consumed by art while opening to people and the city.

The project for has been an exercise in excavating relationships between the city and the site, the inside and the outside, between the past and present and finally between architecture and art.