This however is beautiful, and twice as effective because it makes me see the possibilities of a form that is so often overused , often with much less poetry. I is also ans excellent way to deal with a gallery space, it is not so much the sterile void one often encounters in a gallery, but seems to exist rather as someone above mentioned, as a purified space…

The formal language of strong juxtaposition with a verdant landscape, though inorganic in form, is absolutely aligned with this school of architecture (again expressed at its best).

It always seems to me that within the choice of siting a building lies its fundamental telos. Will the building triumph on the top of a hill (and here I am thinking of Vincenzo Scamozzi’s La Rocca Pisana), will it rest in the brow of the hill as FLW suggests, will it follow the contour of the landscape resting upon it sculpturally (as Siza teaches), or will it incise itself into the terrain itself in the way that KWK Promes has shown to be absolutely contemporary and relevant.

This building, to my eyes, is most effective in its balance of the incision and topographic (Siza) schools without losing the effectiveness of the water passage, and indeed the controlled circulation that is experienced in the FLW Guggenheim (for example).

The one thing that cannot go unsaid is that monuments to love always have their own justification. Shah Jahan’s caused him a great deal of trouble in his life but somehow it still seems worth the effort. Here the building seems to perfectly merge with the work either in counterpoise (as it does with the sculpture) or in harmonious texture (as it does with the panels).

Terry Glenn Phipps