The Dalí Museum, St Petersburg, Florida In 2011 American design frm HOK doubled the size of the original 1980s Dalí Museum by adding a triangulated glass wing on to a prosaic concrete box. This is Salvador’s vision reframed for the 21st century – the glass form looks organic, trippy and alive. Inside, a giant curl of concrete snakes up to the top of an atrium from the spine of a spiral staircase – an elegant echo of Dalí’s distinctive waxed moustache. As well as referencing Dalí, the new wing pays homage to visionary, neo-Futurist architect Buckminster ‘Bucky’ Fuller, who was the master of the geodesic dome as well as a close friend of the Catalonian surrealist.
Soumaya Museum, Mexico City, Mexico Squint and it could be a Philip Treacy fascinator for Grace Jones, or the Selfridges building in Birmingham after being squeezed in the grip of a giant. 16,000 hexagonal aluminium plates cover the exterior of the new art museum in one of Mexico City’s chicest barrios. Finished in 2011, architect Fernando Romero’s design is fashy as hell (to the tune of an estimated $70m), but the collection inside is anything but shallow with works by Leonardo da Vinci, Picasso and Rodin. While the design means the main foors are all artifcially lit, a giant skylight bathes the exhibits on the top foor in natural light.
Polaria Museum, Tromsø, Norway What’s on offer inside might be whimsical and slight: flms of the northern lights and Arctic landscapes, and aquariums populated by frisky bearded seals, but the exterior of the Polaria building itself is quite remarkable, and curiously pleasing. Designed in 1998 by JAF Arkitektkontor, it looks like fve giant white dominoes have been arranged in a line, then knocked over. The illusion is a reference to the ice foes of the Arctic, and the way the ice compacts, breaks and overlaps as it is pressed on the land by the rough seas of the area. It also lends itself to endless tourist photographs – à la the Leaning Tower of Pisa – playing with perspective, pretending to support the dominoes, or ficking them down with a giant fnger.
149 Baku.