From spatial experimentation and installations to construction and urbanism, the Asymptote (office established in 1989 in New York) design is hard to be defined or arranged in theoretical "-ism" categories. For this type of architectural approach, Toyo Ito uses, for example the term of "modern electronic", associated by contrast with the "modern mechanical" one, comparing the consequences of the digital revolution with those of the industrial revolution. No matter whether we call it "liquid", "hybrid" or "digital", the Asymptote architecture has as mission statement the merger between real and virtual, as well as the experimentation of the new technologies, statement supported by all the types of architectural or designed programs accessed.
TEXT: IOANA PAUNESCU
FOTO: ©ASYMPTOTE, TORBEN ESKEROD (UNIVERS THEATERS), CHRISTIAN RICHTERS (FLUX 3, HYDRAPIER)

Even if the contemporary art no longer needs a built space in order to offer itself to the audience, as it often descends among them, in the street or in the bus station, the formula of a museum exclusively intended for it still seems wanted. And, there it is, the museum nested, at its turn within the big house. The concept of the museum belongs to the manager of the institution, and the architect was the one together with whom he operated the spaces. The museum found its place where the gigantic bedrooms were designed for the most important persons in the country, namely on the secondary facade. The intervention over the space was intended to be minimal and friendly. On the ground floor. One of the two halls present here – as well as others on the following floors – is re-scaled to a more accessible level by a marginal dividing wall. The huge ceiling initially intended for an equally huge chandelier, was looked at with condescension by fitting two perpendicular rails with spotlights. The whole interior is neutralized in white, as it was considered more adequate to the idea of a contemporary art museum.
CONCEPT MUZEU: MIHAI OROVEANU
PROIECTARE: CARPATI PROIECT
ARHITECTURA: ADRIAN SPIRESCU
TEXT: LUIZA ZAMORA
FOTO: SERBAN BONCIOCAT

The arrangement in question here represents the headquarters of Vincon company, on Polona street, and the name of Vincon comes from wine, so that we establish from the beginning a clear code for this text.
It represents an inspired choice of an unprofessional – respectively the Vincon company’s manager – regarding, let’s say, the decoration of a space with a rigorously controlled series of textures and objects, at the ground floor and the mezzanine of a building with houses and offices. This place is striking due to the resemblance with what the professionals call with importance "interior architecture", only that the author admits with simplicity that in case of the space situated in the Polona street the result derived from a hobby, of a non-conceptualized appetence for a certain cold, purified, technologically-influenced line, and of a shopping trip at the Milan’s fair.
PROIECT: ARH. MADALIN GHIGEANU
AMENAJARE: LUCHI GEORGESCU
TEXT: SILVIA GUGU
FOTO: SERBAN BONCIOCAT

On the 20th of November, at the anniversary or 75 years of its establishment, the Modern Art Museum from New York reopened. The new site in Manhattan went trough the most serious construction site of restoration and reconstruction in the whole history of the museum; the present physiognomy implies the integration of some new spaces, by which, except that the total surface of the construction is doubled, an extra exhibition area of approximately four thousand square meters is gained. Until December 1997, when he was designated as a winner of the MoMA project contest, Yoshio Taniguchi was mostly known within the Japanese space, which was also the only space sheltering its creations with honor. The stakes of Taniguchi’s project was “to create the ideal ambient for the interaction between art and its audience, by the ingenious but disciplined recourse to light, materials and space; to imagine a museum which maintains and, moreover, emphasizes the identity of MoMA and of its incomparable collection of art”. The architect’s strategy focused on and included the creation, on the Western wing, of generous exhibition spaces and the design of spaces intended for education and research. Viewed from the exterior, from the 54th street in Manhattan, the two geometrical buildings beautifully support the dual feature of the activity developed in this institution – exhibition of the collection and education.
DESIGN ARCHITECT: YOSHIO TANIGUCHI, TANIGUCHI AND ASSOCIATES, TOKYO
PROIECT: KOHN PEDERSON FOX, NEW YORK; COOPER, ROBERTSON & PARTNERS, NEW YORK
TEXT: OANA TANASE
FOTOCREDIT: MOMA