Architecture – American Alliance of Museums

Crafting the Museum Experience: How Mingei International Museum Centered Mission and Visitor Experience in a Major Renovation

By Jennifer Luce & Rob Sidner

In September 2021, Mingei International Museum will reopen after a three-year, fifty-five-million-dollar renovation. This ambitious and unique capital project, completed in partnership with architect Jennifer Luce, has resulted in a fully …
Never Waste the Walls: What PK-12 Schools Can Learn from Museum Design

By Mike Corb, AIA and Troy Hoggard, AIA, EDAC

Generally speaking, children are much more enthusiastic about heading to a children’s museum than school, even though learning occurs in both places. Visit a children’s museum any day of the year and you can literally see their excitement …
Will COVID-19 Change Museum Architecture?

By Bruce Davis and Ron Elad

Here’s a happy thought: COVID-19 will—at some point—recede, and like pandemics of the past it will be history, another story to tell. But after the disease is gone, will any of the effects linger, possibly even forever? People have …
Serving Broader Audiences, Museums Engage Communities with Public Space

By Erin Flynn & Andrew Barwick

Many of today’s museum leaders recognize a need to engage more closely with the public, and a related desire to make their facilities and programs more flexible and valuable. In order to achieve these goals, it can be useful to explore new …
Don Wildman: Why does the Museum of Science & Industry look the way it does?

By Don Wildman

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A Futuryst Look at the Museum of Tomorrow

By Elizabeth Merritt

I’ve been following the work of Futurist Stuart Candy since the inception of CFM. The Sceptical Futuryst—his blog dedicated to “how we might feel about tomorrow”– is a staple of my scanning feed, and I’ve made good use of The Thing …
Futurist Friday: Cognitive Museum Buildings

By Elizabeth Merritt

Here’s a short video from Jonathan Strickland of Forward Thinking on the emergence of “cognitive buildings”: structures that use the internet of things (IoT) to analyze performance and anticipate our needs. …
Designing for Resilience

By Elizabeth Merritt

One of the themes CFM focuses on in TrendsWatch 2015 is the changing climate of risk facing museums. Fully a quarter of museums & related organizations in the IMLS MUDF database are located in coastal areas with high vulnerability …