The main condition set by the customers to the bidders was respect for the trees growing on the building plot. They had to preserve the maximum number of 73 trees currently existing there. Having received this formulation of the task, four of the five workshops that entered the second stage of the competition raised their buildings above the ground, with or without a platform.
Coop Himmelb (l) ay envisions the future Eli and Edith Brod Museum as two elongated concrete blocks of exhibition halls attached to a circular glass lobby. A footbridge connects the building with an open-air sculpture garden.
The Cohn Pedersen Fox project resembles a huge silver whale. It is placed on a platform where the largest exhibits from the museum's collection of sculpture will also be placed. The walls of the building resemble a membrane: they have many rounded holes of different sizes, which serve to illuminate the interior space. In the dark, thanks to them, the museum will glow from the inside.
Rendell Stout, an architect who has worked with Frank Gehry for a long time, will save 63 of the 73 trees growing on the museum site. The volumes of the exhibition halls faced with polished zinc are raised above the ground almost to the level of the crowns of the trees surrounding the building.
Tom Maine connected his project with the park through the active use of glazing. The main volume of the museum building is also raised above the ground, supported by a completely transparent lobby block on the ground floor. All exhibition halls have sections of glass floor through which visitors can see the artwork and the park from an unusual angle.
Zaha Hadid's project is the only one of the five that "stands firmly on the ground." Its elongated shapes create the illusion of speed and dynamics. The glass walls of the museum, in the plan resembling a horizontally elongated trapezoid, will be closed with steel blinds that will constantly open and close. As a result, the momentary view of the interior corner will be replaced by reflections in the metal panels of the park's trees.
The results of the competition will be announced in early September.
