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December 1, 2008
I.M. Pei and Islamic Art
Here's a great photo of the new Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar (flickr is the blogger's friend!). I really want to see it in person (the interiors are pretty splendid, too!). I haven't read much about the collection, but there's no reason it shouldn't be amazing as well.
A positive thing - one can tell from the exterior that the plan of the building is a reducing-figure geometric scheme - corners cut again and again and again as we approach the center. That's a sense of Modernist transparency made contextual. I like that.
The striped masonry on the ground floor (look at the bottom left) is more half-hearted. That kind of polychromy, very common in exteriors after 1000, was usually not restricted to one area but spread across the entire surface. I'm not sure it works as an adjunct to a big, plain surface. It reminds me of the grimness of Italian cathedrals with unfinished facades, really.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at December 1, 2008 7:51 AM