Comments on: Turner Contemporary by David Chipperfield

By: Cisca

Cisca — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 20:47:27 +0000

A beauthiful sunny springday visiting Margate, but the disappointment was too much to let pass unmentioned. The new museum is nothing like all the photos you find on the webside. From the outside it has no character, not a line or interesting curve meets the eye, the inside is even harder to come to terms with. The lay out and use of space seems utterly empty of any meaning or desire to invite the challenge of contemporary art.It is a box on the seafront without any attempt to use shapes, shadows and the playfulfulness of light through the square windows above eyelevel. It lacks any immagination of an acclaimed architect claiming rewards which buggles the mind. Walking around the building does not inspire either there is a definite lack of vision. Pedestrians wonder between random parked cars, no marked aereas for skippining childeren a tree or an inviting sculpture. Perhaps it has all to do with money but with little money one can create more than just concrete and grey matter.

By: SImone

SImone — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 09:25:32 +0000

I take pictures of buildings and I really don't want people in my pictures. Sometimes it is handy if you wan tot have a sense of scale and proportion, but in general I want to have a sense of the space and volume at hand and people in the picture take something out of that experience, they distract me. I even don't want my kids in the picture. The best of two worlds would be when the people are a sort of blur as it were.

By: dean

dean — Thu, 05 May 2011 11:37:38 +0000

I really liked this building which i visited over the weekend, the terrace aspect facing back towards Margate and the sea views are great. The building is much more modest in scale than I had expected, but that is quite nice in a way. There are a few gripes though; the building is basically empty having no collection of its own and the links of the exhibited work to turner seem fairly tenuous and perhaps dare I say, an afterthought. There is a genuine feeling that there is a mix of people using the building (not just day tripping architects from London) and the allocation of space has a focus on community art projects which is also a staple of Margate. The cafe is great, but you have the feeling that when its winter and no one is outside it is going to be a bit on the small side and quickly outgrow its current space.
Also the budget, this is touted as an economical alternative to the Snohetta scheme but it is a £17.5 million project @ 2000m2, so it cost nearly £9000 per m2 which seems seriously expensive! Overall, I really like it though and think it is definitely a great commission for Margate when you put it against some of the white elephant gallery projects of the last few years.

By: James

James — Wed, 04 May 2011 22:44:24 +0000

I am a committed minimal modernist, but Chipperfield's work often just bores me.

By: ross

ross — Wed, 04 May 2011 14:10:56 +0000

anyone have a link to pictures of snohettas' proposal?