Bernard Tschumi describes the New Acropolis Museum as an anti-Bilbao museum, in reference to Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum. This should not be seen as a criticism of Gehry’s work, but more a description of the way in which the two buildings operate. The Gugenheim in Bilbao was all about creating an object, building a new context that would draw people to a relatively obscure Spanish city. The building’s sculptural form is now far more famous than its contents that are of secondary importance for many. On the other hand, the New Acropolis Museum sits in the context of one of the most famous works of architecture in the world – so quite rightly does not try to compete with it. Tschumi’s design is all about the contents of the building – relating these artefacts back to their original context through careful design, in a way that despite its vast physical presence, the building itself fades into the background as a mere framework for the viewing of the pieces within.

From:
Building

A hard act to follow: the New Acropolis
12 June 2009
By Dan Stewart

This is the New Acropolis museum, and it’s located a two-minute stroll from the most famous building in the world. So how did the architect handle that brief?

Bernard Tschumi’s long-awaited New Acropolis Museum is to open this month in Athens. The €130m (£113m) building was first mooted as long ago as 1976, when the first of four competitions was held. In 2000, Bernard Tschumi, a deconstructivist French architect known principally for his Parc de la Villette in Paris, won the fourth, and final brief.
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