More coverage of the photographic exhibition about the New Acropolis Museum that is currently on display in Odessa.

From:
Greek Reporter

Photo Exhibition on New Acropolis Museum Inaugurated in Odessa
By Stella Tsolakidou on March 26, 2012

A photographic exhibition on the New Acropolis Museum opened on Saturday at the Hellenic Foundation for Culture branch in Odessa, in the context of celebrations marking the anniversary of the March 25, 1821 Greek revolution against Ottoman rule.

The exhibition will include architects Bernard Tschumi’s and Michalis Fotiadis’ drafts, external views of the building and surrounding area, including the finds uncovered during construction of the new museum, as well as the interior of the museum and its displays.

The exhibition, organised in cooperation with the New Acropolis Museum, will run through April 28.

(Source: AMNA)

Niki Dollis who has worked with the Organisation for the Construction of the New Acropolis Museum for the entire duration of the project (& will be known to anyone who visited the site before the building opened), has written a book for children about the actual process of construction of the new museum & the reasons that a new museum was needed.

The book came out earlier this year – it has currently sold out, but I’ve been told that more copies are printed & it will soon be available again in the shop at the New Acropolis Museum.

From:
Greek Reporter

Greek Australian Writes Storybook: “Building the New Acropolis Museum”
Posted on 18 September 2010 by Apostolos Papapostolou

The book “Building the New Acropolis Museum” is by Niki Dollis and illustrated and designed by Elena Zournatzi. The children’s book tells the story of the realization of a dream. As Niki Dollis mentions in her introduction, it is “a book about hope, expectation… but also hard work for the construction and preparation of the New Acropolis Museum”. The storybook is published by Livanis Publishing Organization. Dollis is the Director of Mr. Pantermalis’ office, who is the head of the New Acropolis Museum.

Through the 60 pages of her book Dollis familiarizes young and all readers, with the notion of a museum. It is a very interesting subject to begin with especially when it serves as an open window to the world of ancient Greece, such as the New Acropolis Museum.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Architectural Record argues that the New Acropolis Museum represents the most powerful case yet for the reunification of all the surviving Parthenon Sculptures in Athens.

From:
Architectural Record

New Acropolis Museum, Athens, Greece
Bernard Tschumi Architects presents a case for bringing the Elgin Marbles back to Athens in its design for the New Acropolis Museum.
By Suzanne Stephens

After all the controversy, lawsuits, and delays in building the New Acropolis Museum in Athens, it will no doubt seem churlish to point out that the $180 million museum, designed by Bernard Tschumi Architects, is not the firm’s most spectacular work. It lacks the lyrical grace of the stainless-steel-and-concrete Zenith concert hall in Rouen or the finesse of the shimmering, perforated-steel Vacheron Constantin headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, to name two. The dour mien of the New Acropolis Museum, with its sharp angles, black-fritted glass (except for a small section of the south wall), and less-than-perfect concrete work evokes High Modernist commercial American buildings of the 1970s.
Read the rest of this entry »

Whilst there have been many articles praising the design of the New Acropolis Museum, it is hardly surprising that some people have other views about the design of the building. The building was however the result of a number of competitions, so although some may dislike the design it is clear that many believed it was the best solution to the complex project brief. In many cases we might want a building to be somehow different, but there are always compromises to be made – trade offs between the building & its surroundings, openness & security etc.

From:
Archinect

Archinect Op-Ed: The Acropolis Museum; An Unhappy Fit
Jul 31, 2009
by Jan Lepicovsky

Last June, after three decades of competitions and debate, the Acropolis Museum in Athens opened to the public. It was designed by internationally re-known architect Bernard Tschumi, and it houses nearly 4000 ancient Greek artifacts, including the great stones of the parthenonʼs frieze. I first visited the Acropolis 15 years ago as an undergraduate student of architecture. Last month I had the opportunity to visit the site again, now with the eyes of an experienced architect. Hearing about the controversy surrounding the new museum, I was eager to see how one of the great theorists and idols from my student yeas responded to such a challenging, high-profile commission. My first glimpses of the building brought that familiar rush of excitement and anticipation, the kind you get at a concert just before the performer takes the stage. The simple geometric volumes, one rotated above the other, were familiar from pictures and, seeing it live, I could appreciate its powerful yet restrained presence. I walked the long way around to the front in order to take in the whole exterior. By the time I had made it around the block to the entrance, my initial excitement had faded and a different impression began to form.
Read the rest of this entry »

The New Acropolis Museum is one of the most high profile cultural projects in Europe in the last decade. The British Museum still claims that its existence does not change anything though in the argument for the reunification of the Elgin Marbles.

From:
London Daily News

09 July, 2009 18:30 (GMT +01:00)
Why It’s Time We Lost ‘Our’ Marbles
By Gemma Brosnan

It has been described as one of the most high profile cultural projects undertaken in Europe this decade, costing over €120m after 33 years of planning.

Designed by Swiss-born/New York based architect, Bernard Tschumi and his Greek associate, Michael Photiadis, The New Acropolis museum opened in Athens last month to much fanfare, presenting a spectacular modern building boasting 226,000 square feet of glass, 150,000 square feet of display space spanning five floors and 4,000 artifacts.
Read the rest of this entry »

Many of the press in Greece have been producing special features in supplements in the run up to the opening of the New Acropolis Museum. Athens Plus has produced one in English, that gives an overview of many aspects of the museum from its inception & aims to it current realisation. I encourage people to view the original article in PDF form at the web address given below to see the numerous photos that accompany the text.

From:
Athens Plus

Friday, June 19, 2009
New Acropolis Museum opens its doors
Modern building housing thousands of antiquities is finally ready to welcome visitors

After a long wait, the New Acropolis Museum, the most significant landmark to grace the cultural landscape of Athens in years, will open its doors following its inauguration on Saturday.

Priceless artifacts, some of which have been hidden away for years, will be displayed in surroundings especially designed to showcase their splendor. Athens Plus examines the impact of the new museum on the city, the debate about its design, what visitors can expect to see and whether it strengthens Greece’s case for the return of the Parthenon Marbles.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.
Read the rest of this entry »

The New Acropolis Museum is designed specifically for the purpose of presenting an unparalleled collection of ancient artefacts – some of which unfortunately will not be there when it opens.

From:
Arch Innovations

The New Acropolis Museum, Designed by Bernard Tschumi Architects
Tuesday, 07 April 2009

The historic masterpieces of the New Acropolis Museum—from the archaeological remains of ancient Athens left visible beneath the building to the glorious Parthenon frieze installed at the top— will be displayed in total for the first time when the Museum celebrates its much-anticipated official opening on Saturday, June 20, 2009.

Designed by Bernard Tschumi Architects of New York/Paris with Michael Photiadis of Athens as local associate architect, the Museum has presented a number of temporary exhibitions in a lower-floor gallery over the past year. With the official opening, visitors will at last view the full suite of galleries, presented in a dramatic architectural experience designed explicitly for this collection.
Read the rest of this entry »

Bernard Tschumi, one of the two designers of the New Acropolis Museum (along with Michael Photiadis) is to give a talk this coming Tuesday at the RIBA in London on the New Acropolis Museum. Tickets must be booked in advance as space is limited. There is also a second talk for students on the morning of the day after.

From:
Hellenic Foundation for Culture

New Acropolis Museum: The London Preview
Events organized by the HFC in UK and
the Royal Institute of British Architects
2 & 3 December 2008, Jarvis Hall – RIBA,
London

The Hellenic Foundation for Culture and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) present the London preview of the New Acropolis Museum, scheduled to open in Spring 2009, on 2 & 3 December 2008, at RIBA’s Jarvis Hall in London. The events are organized under the auspices of the Greek Ministry of Culture with the support of the Organisation for Construction of the New Acropolis Museum.
Read the rest of this entry »

The New Acropolis Museum represents Greece’s most ambitious attempt to reclaim the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum.

From:
CNN

New Acropolis Museum ready for Marbles
By Eleni Gage
29 October 2008

It’s an incongruous sight: a super-modern, glass-walled building set at the foot of the ancient Acropolis.

But while the New Acropolis Museum, designed by New York-based architect Bernard Tschumi, may appear to defy Athens’s great history, it is, in fact, the city’s most ambitious attempt to reclaim its cultural patrimony: built to hold archaeological finds spanning 2,500 years, including the absent Elgin Marbles (portions of the Parthenon frieze), which the Greek government has been trying to recover from the British Museum since the mid 1800s.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Parthenon Gallery is in every sense the high point of a visit to the New Acropolis Museum. Even journalists who have initially been against the whole concept of the museum have come away awed by its creation of a suitable space for the reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures.

From:
The Times

August 28, 2008
Athens welcomes the ghost of Phidias to new rooftop gallery
Marcus Binney, Architecture Correspondent

The new rooftop gallery built to display the Parthenon marbles is one of the most beautiful exhibition spaces in modern architecture.

Just as the Parthenon itself enjoys a 360-degree panorama of sparkling sea and green hills, the new ¤130 million gallery has a continuous view over the rooftops of Athens, interrupted only by the Acropolis itself. Sunlight fills the gallery through floor-to-ceiling glass, and the windows have such slender supports you might be standing in the open air enjoying blue skies and the crystal light which is the wonder of Attica.
Read the rest of this entry »

In this interview, Bernard Tschumi makes it very clear that he believes that the Elgin Marbles will return to Athens, stating that the return will make sense to everyone once they see the facilities created within the New Acropolis Museum.

From:
Wallpaper

Bernard Tschumi Q&A exclusive
Architecture
8 August 2008

After nearly 30 years of planning, and eight years since the international competition was launched for the project, the New Acropolis Museum in Athens is ready: the collections are carefully being moved in as we speak, and the official opening is expected with much anticipation towards the end of the year.

Proudly headed by architect Bernard Tschumi, the new museum project team also comprises local architect Michael Photiadis and the museum’s director Professor Dimitrios Pandermalis, who showed us around the new bright and airy building, where we had the chance to meet Swiss-born Tschumi, and discuss his concept, the design, Athens and the Parthenon sculptures.
Read the rest of this entry »