revolutionaries wait for my head on a silver plate

Our entire class took one final field trip this Wednesday to the new Louvre museum in Lens, France (an extension of the Louvre in Paris). It was built just recently and is in fact still receiving its finishing touches.

The main exhibit hall, la galerie du temps (or the gallery of time) is long and narrow and the art is organized along the length of the hall chronologically.

There’s a timeline near the top of one of the walls that spans from 3500 BC (shown here) to 1850 AD.

It was a special treat to be taken on a tour led by Lucy, one of the actual site architects, from SANAA, the Japanese firm that designed the museum.

She told us some things that are probably not made known to most people who visit the museum, for example that the anodized aluminum material used on many of the exterior walls was originally (in the competition entry) not going to be used on the interior walls in the galerie du temps, but that that was a later addition to the design. Lucy said that is one of her favorite parts of the museum, and I quite like it too.

In addition to the architecture, I enjoyed seeing the art at the museum too, and I was especially excited to see Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People.

I don’t think I’d say the landscaping around the museum is quite my taste, but I certainly found it funny that Lucy told us those grass mounds (pictured below) were designed mostly to protect from attacking tanks (yikes!) but also to be benches, but when people in our group tried to sit on them they were scolded by security guards! :)

We had our midterm reviews in design studio today, and I may have made everything in my model twice as tall as it was supposed to be… oops! But I got some good feedback and I am looking forward to working with my project more next week.

But first, a relaxing weekend getaway with Sierra :) …stay tuned!