Rotterdam's art warehouse that can revolutionize the world's most important museums

The history of Netherlands, with large extensions of land won to the sea, is that of its fight against waters.Rotterdam's port city has suffered several historical floods, so when Sjarel Ex was appointed director of the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, his main concern was the risk that works of art ran."It seemed very dangerous for those in the warehouse, which also remained in very bad conditions," he recalls.The awareness of this danger gave him an idea: to make another safer warehouse on the outskirts.Fifteen years later, his proposal has come true.Only it has not been built on the outskirts, but next to the main building, and more than a warehouse looks like another museum.

"This is not a museum," denies the greatest Sjarel ex a few days before the opening to the public of the Boijmans Van Beuningen, scheduled for November 6. The new building has a deposit function for the 150,000 works that make up the extensive funds of this museum that has been open for more than 170 years and treasures jewels signed by artists such as El Bosco, Rembrandt, Van Gogh or Kandinsky, but will also allow the public access him and admire all its content. Therefore, it belongs to a hybrid typology of which there are no precedents. In addition, those responsible for the institution wanted to support the building on sustainability criteria. For its design, a contest that won the MVRDV study, led by Dutch Winy Maas: a firm that began to obtain international recognition thanks to the pavilion of his country for the 2000 Hannover, a project on the creation of sustainable space considering considering the creation of sustainable space considering considering land restrictions in the Netherlands.

On this occasion, MVRDV has conceived a 39.5 meters high building with six plants connected by suspended stairs. The exterior has an inverted bell shape - another hypothesis: a vase, a pot, a cup - that is widened from the base, and its convex facade of 1,664 glass panels that reflects the environment. "It's as if it floats on the ground, and also does not turn your back on the neighborhood," explains Winy Maas for Icon Design. "From outside it is like a living painting, reflecting surrounding buildings, clouds, walkers and also skaters, who have found here a perfect place to practice." It also highlights the vegetation that appears from its roof, a space that has more surface than it "steals" to the ground, which was totally sought: "we wanted to return the green on the roof to compensate for the loss of space of the park. The roof forest is pleasant for visitors, but also gives added value in terms of sustainability. The bold and pines and the lawn that we have located there help to retention of water, promote biodiversity and decrease the caloric stress of the city. ”

As for the interior, Sjarel Ex compares it with the engravings of Piranesi, where ramps and stairs intersect interconnecting the levels of their 14 storage spaces in five areas with differentiated air conditioning."We have made a kind of panoptic," adds Winy Maas.“It has a transparent atrium with a lot of glass crossed by the stairs.A whole puzzle, because we had to make everyone accessible for an art collection that costs billions of euros. ”

That is its main distinctive feature: if the function expected of a museum is to exhibit and that of a warehouse hides, here everything gravitates around the tension between what is shown and what is hidden.Most of the pieces are preserved in mobile storage panels (those known as combs), but a selection of them hangs into motley glass polls that seem inspired by the exhibition system invented by the italo-Brazil architect Lina Bo Bardi.Paradoxically, the theatricality of the system also reminds the walls covered with ground boxes from the nineteenth -century museums.

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In rooms like the one that stores pictorial jewels of the Middle Ages to the Baroque, the viewer can see the trucks entering and leaving, the conservation processes and what happens in the tank."There is a more restricted area, only accessible in the company of a guide, but the rest is freely traffic," explains the director.Not only will funds belonging to Boijmans van Beuningen be shown, but also to other private collections: "In exchange for a rental, collectors can have a space and our conservation services for their works, which are also exposed to the public."

Currently, the main headquarters are closed by remodeling work that is not expected to end before the year 2027. When reopening occurs, the pieces will be distributed between the two buildings: “We will return to the previous scheme, with 3,000 works permanently exposed in theMuseum, while the deposit will stay to show its kitchens. ”

The inauguration of the Depot arrives at a crucial moment for the museum sector.On the one hand, in large gaps that usually expose only between 5% and 10% of their funds, the discussion about the selection criteria for which some works must be shown to the public and others are relegated to the basements is open.On the other, climate change also threatens artistic collections.In 2016, the Louvre and Orsay museums had to close the public for a few days and transfer the warehouse works to the Sena's announcement to the upper plants, after which the Louvre built a new deposit in Liévin, north ofFrance, near its center of Lens.This reveals the need to build safer stores, but also more practical and spacious.

The experts of the Victoria and Albert Museum made several visits to Róterdam when they began establishing the requirements of their own deposit in the East London Park, which has finally designed another great study, Diller Scofidio + Renfro.Sjarel Ex does not rule out the possibility of continuing to export his model to other art centers: “The professional world follows us: every week someone comes to see what we have done.They arrive from South Korea, Canada, Norway ... We are a unique museum and deposit combination, and that is having the best of two worlds. ”