Jean Nouvel beats out a cluster of starchitects for the design of the new National Art Museum of China

According to a report in Architectural Record, Jean Nouvel has headed off a cluster of high-profile starchitects, including Zaha Hadid and Frank Gehry, for the design of a mega-sized new building for the National Art Museum of China in Beijing. It is the most prominent of a trio of three buildings (the others are a museum devoted to arts and crafts and a sinology museum) being planned for the site next to the Herzog & de Meuron-designed Bird's Nest. The competing architects were reportedly told to aim for a building "so iconic that one day people will say the Birds Nest is next to it."
Image: Jean Nouvel's Louvre, Abu Dhabi

Can Frank Gehry deliver the Bilbao effect in Panama?

Fifteen years after the completion of the Guggenheim Bilbao, Frank Gehry is close to finishing his first project in Latin America where officials have high hopes that his Museum of Biodiversity (or Biomuseo) will emerge as a new icon for Panama and become a cultural destination, like the small shipbuilding town of Bilbao.

Responding to the current biodiversity crisis - a crisis ushered in by the loss of habitat, the extinction of thousands of plant and animal species and the rapid dwindling of the last frontiers on earth - the Biomuseo aims to play a role in preserving the world's natural heritage for the future by telling stories about nature's wonders "with the most alluring, educational and conscience-building impact."

Gehry's building shows no trace of its ecological agenda - rather he has applied his signature formal fragmentations to create an eclectic structure that collages shape and colour, designed to deliver the Bilbao effect.
Image: Frank Gehry's Biomuseo in Panama City.

Frank Gehry designs a duplex for Brad Pitt's Make it Right Foundation

Since it was launched in 2007 to help rebuild the flood-ruined lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, Brad Pitt's Make it Right Foundation has been able to build 86 homes for displaced residents, including ones by starchitects David Adjaye and Shigeru Ban.

A duplex designed by Frank Gehry, another of the 21 architects enlisted by Pitt, has just been completed. Designing something that would sit well in a family neighborhood proved to be an interesting challenge for the architect. He said: "I wanted to make a house that I would like to live in and one that responded to the history, vernacular and climate of New Orleans." It is Gehry's first home in Louisiana and one of only 22 Gehry houses in the US.
Image: Frank Gehry's Duplex for the Make it Right Foundation

Artists boycott Guggenheim Abu Dhabi project

The Guggenheim's Abu Dhabi outpost faces a boycott from a group of 130 international artists, curators and writers who say they will refuse to cooperate on the project until working condition for labourers building the $800m museum are improved.

The petition, published online and and addressed to Richard Armstrong, the director of the Guggenheim Foundation and also its New York museum says: "Human rights violations are are currently occurring on Saadiyat Island, the location of the new museum." Read more...

Image: A model of Frank Gehry's planned Guggenheim Abu Dhabi