The Hirshhorn Museum in DC — institution of the three Hs and a spiffy new rebranding — has proposed the next step in its director’s master plan to Shake Things Up and Make It Relevant. Blake Gopnik for the Washington Post reports that Hirshhorn director Richard Koshalek has pitched installation artist Doug Aitken to imagine a new museum shop. Based on the directive to make “architecture out of light,” Aitken’s proposal (barely out of the planning stages) would require moving the the bookstore into the basement, away from its current position at the building’s entrance. Illuminating the space would be a “broad shaft pierced through the museum’s Independence Avenue forecourt, bringing natural illumination” into what Aitken calls a “really oppressive basement.” (True, but what will be done with the Black Box Gallery video space?) Peep the initial rendering after the jump.
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Graphic design studio Chermayeff & Geismar recently unveiled a spiffy new look for the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC — one of the venerable Smithsonian art institutions and the second most attended contemporary art museum in the US.* The problem? The museum’s name is still widely unknown, even after a previous rebranding effort in 2008. (And as highlighted in the revamped logo design, it possesses two concurrent H’s in its spelling.) Take a closer look with us after the jump and examine some possible influences for the new design. Update: hear what the designer has to say.
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Art-themed architecture can be big and bold, or stark and subtle. In mid-century California, Brutalism was the design edict of choice, and now area code 510 is bringing it back into the public eye with a renovation of the Oakland Museum of California.
Civic architects Mark Cavegnero Associates are retrofitting the existing structure with modernized gallery spaces and open interiors. A cleaned-up new logo is part of the museum’s reinvented aesthetic identity. Take a look at the relook below the cut.
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We remember a time when America Online was the most important thing to happen to the internet since the personal computer. While we’ve long since abandoned the brand for greener, Google-ier pastures, AOL is still around, kids! And in the wake of their spin-off from Time Warner, they’re trying out a new identity as part of an effort to seem younger, hipper, and less like a haven for Dateline‘s sexual predators. More of the new logos, plus a look at some of their previous re-branding attempts, after the jump.
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