Recollection: A New BMFA

The project takes up the Museum expansion plans by designing a Study Center for Contemporary Japanese Art and Culture next to the Japanese Garden on the Fens. The Pavilion will house the Schwartz collection of Japanese transformer toys. These objects, exhibit common characteristic like formal flatness and vivid colors, and continue a rich artistic legacy of Japanese artistic production from scroll painting to Samurai armor while also being part of contemporary popular cultural movements such as anime and manga.

 

Histories run parallel, but memories intersect. Examining the scales of a global history and architecture, the project investigation seeks to demonstrate the elastic relationship between architectural artifacts and memory. Furthermore, it aims to reveal the complexity and richness of the intersection of time, space, and place. This phenomenon creates opportunities for spaces that are voids for contemplation and frames for observation allowing for a dynamic dialogue between the artifacts within and beyond.

Boston’s new artifact is a monster that is constantly (r)evolving. The unique relationship to the viewer produces a transformative state, which demonstrates the struggle between cultural traditions and modern tendencies. Reconsidering the museum expansion, spatially and programmatically, transforms its narrative and leads to the development of a new myth; a myth that begins both at the scale of the body and the city, simultaneously carving through time towards the constructed center.