The Forum Barcelona by Herzog & de Meuron. It’s on one end of the Diagonal, which is a very long and straight diagonal road that slices across the city. The other end is the university, where the Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura is located. The Torre Agbar is somewhere in them middle.
You can see David, Jeff and me in the reflection of the ceiling lobby underneath the Forum’s main exhibition space. Novel materials and many little places to explore, but oddly this part of town still feels deserted.
They have so many museums here that their only city guide is “Guide to Museums – Basel”. At this point I feel that this city is extremely overhyped. Even Jeff says, “It’s like Taipei”. We expected the city, or at least even the museums, to be forefronts of contemporary architecture. With the exception of Mario Botta’s Tinguely museum, all of them are actually just interior renovations of old buildings. And to make things worse, we are not allowed to bring cameras inside the museums!
As for the exhibits, the Kunstmuseum had the most highlights. The famous apples on a table still life by Cezanne, Picasso’s Naked Boy, and one of my personal favorites, Van Gogh’s self portrait are all in here.
The Tingueley Museum by Mario Botta was alright, we concentrated more on the building than the rather interesting looking Tingueley exhibits.
Make Love, Not War.
The Architecture Museum is really really pathetic. It is tiny, has practically nothing about architecture, and most of the space are taken by art installations. The only good thing about it is the fact that I bought the Traveler’s Edition of the Phaidon Architectural Atlas. And inside the book I discovered that Herzog & de Meuron’s Signal Box is actually in Basel !!!!! Freaked out, why didn’t I do more research earlier, I have always LOVED this building. To make things more freaky, it’s actually just across the road from my hostel!!! And I’ve walked past it (duh, you blind fool) a number of times !!!
Another building I accidently “bumped” into.
On our way back, we saw some weird metal things protruding out of people’s front doors. Figured it’s a shoescrapper thing, maybe this used to be a mudtown.
