Diploma 15 Museum Lab The ever-growing scepticism towards the capacity of the rigid nineteenth- and twentieth-century museum model to transgress its own institutional boundaries is paralleled by an unprecedented growth in scale and extravagance of exhibition spaces, reflecting the art market’s expansion over the last three decades. Further questioning the contemporary relevance of the museum is the fact that today the global media – a virtual place with no historical memory – has replaced the museum in informing both our visual culture and our perception of art. The aim of the unit is to reflect on the paradoxes of contemporary museums and their current ideological, cultural, social, structural and technological transformations. Stimulated by a dense programme of specialist seminars and workshops analysing different scales and museum typologies (including state and private institutions, kunsthallen, galleries, provincial museums and temporary structures), students will work as independent researchers focusing, among other aspects, on: the notion of museum as repository; contemporary collecting and art storage practices; the rise of the curator; the inflation of the art market; the effects of the digital; museum franchises; the dogmatic constraints of the museum climate; and temporary art events. Alongside this research – which will be compiled in end-of-year books and generate individual design proposals – all students will design an essential component of any contemporary museum: a pop-up art bookstore. Far from an abstract design exercise, the project of the book pavilion, developed in close collaboration with Technical Studies, will be run as an actual design competition and the winning design will be constructed as a pop-up store for Lars Müller Publishers. The detailed design brief, including the curatorial strategy of the book display, will be developed with the students in Zurich on the occasion of our first unit trip to Switzerland and Italy.
Unit Masters Giulia Foscari Ekaterina Golovatyuk Unit Tutor Harikleia Karamali
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Giulia Foscari is an architect, curator and author. Having taught at Hong Kong University and collaborated with Zaha Hadid Architects and Foster + Partners, in 2009 she joined OMA/AMO working in Asia and South America, where she was in charge of OMA’s Latin American platform. Returning to Europe in 2014, she was a member of Rem Koolhaas’ curatorial team for the Venice Biennale, published
Elements of Venice and established her independent practice in Hamburg. She has been a unit master at the AA since 2015. Ekaterina Golovatyuk is an independent architect and researcher based in Milan, focusing on cultural projects in Russia and Europe. She has worked at OMA/AMO for eight years where, among other projects, she led the design
and execution of Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow. Harikleia Karamali graduated from the AA Diploma in 2014 and was teaching in AA Intermediate 4 during 2015/2016. She has worked at John Pawson Architects and is now a project architect at Rare Architecture in London.