de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco

de Young Museum is located in San Francisco in the Golden Gate Park. The one standing is a replacement for the prior one. The prior one was destroyed in the 1989 Loma Earthquake. Which was later demolished in 2002. The architect that built the best museum by design would be granted the privilege of designing and creating the new one. However, this competition was held in 1998, before the old museum was demolished. The architects by the manes of Herzog and de Meuron, entered and won, receiving the commission in 1999.

Their design consisted of a copper façade, cladding the museum exteriors. It has three public entrances. The main entrance, the second by the café and the sculpted garden on the west and the third at the east end. It is really rare for a museum to have so many entrances. The actual museum consist of two buildings, the building they hold all the exhibitions in and a tower. Now, the twisting tower serves as an observation deck and the Museum Store are on the ninth floor. The ninth floor's walls are all glass windows. The Main Court is on the ground floor connecting to the other uses. The basement holds temporary exhibits, while it also connects to the parking garage. While the upper two levels hold more permanent exhibits are placed on the upper two levels


What I loved the most about the de Young Museum was the view the observation deck provided. It provided a spectacular view of the city, the bay area and the Sculpted Garden that it shares with The Academy of Natural Sciences. 

Urban Buildings: San José

Friday, January 25, we had the chance to go to the Urban city, San José. In San José, we were able to see four buildings, City Hall, Tech Museum, and Martin Luther King Jr. We were able to compare and contrast the different buildings. What was so unique about the three of these is that they aren't uniformed. They're all  so different from each other yet, they're in the same area. One has a glass facade, the other a mexican theme, and the other is a mixture of glass and concrete. It may seem like different areas of a state, but they're all in the same are and city.

The City Hall Dome reminded me of a R2D2, with it's steel blades hanging from it, covering the glass dome. The thing I found curious was what my teacher pointed out. The building's orientation was facing AWAY from downtown. It had it's "back" against it. Next was the Martin Luther King Jr. Library. The library combined the heavy elements with light elements makes it an interesting building to look at. If you pay close attention, the tower part of it sorta looks like an open book. Maybe a reason behind it? The building I loved the most was the Tech Museum. Not for it's content but for it's outside. The colors he chose were very contradicting. How the orange was very different from the blue of the IMAX Theater. But how, Legorreta decided to make it a mexican themed building in the middle of an Urban city. Just overall, how each Architect decided to make each building their own