Art Gallery and Theatre : Experiencing and Sensing

Art Gallery and Museum buildings have a significant role to play within the immediate site and location. As an addition to a community, the cultural building not only offer exciting new architectural design and creative, social and economic input to the existing community, attracting visitors from near and far, but also forms a close relationship to the individual visitor. Every glimpse, touch and movement through a space records and connects on a sensory level. The buildings and spaces we move through, affect the way we see things, the way we feel and sense the world around us, directly or indirectly. Visiting buildings where art is on show, where we go to enjoy and experience art exhibitions or performances, immediately allow for sensory experiences, connecting us to the space at that very moment; creating a special place. As visitors, we become part of the building components, through our very presence, as we interact and move through, responding to the site, programme, theme, materiality and sensory qualities of the building. In this article, the featured Art Gallery and Theatre buildings will be studied and considered from the point of view of the body; the visitor, inhabitant or passer-by. Ideas of the experiential side of being in, interacting with and addressing buildings from within and from a distance will be the main focus. The buildings covered are: The Jean-Claude Carrière Theatre in Montpellier, France, by A+ Architecture, the Wuhzen Theatre, in Zhejiang, China by Artech Architects, the Auckland Art Gallery by FJMT (Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp), the Tree Art Museum in Beijing, China by Daipu Architects, the Mizuta Museum of Art, Sakado, Japan, by Studio SUMO, the Artful Teshima Yokoo House, in Teshima, Japan, by Yuko Nagayama, the Museum for Architecture Drawings, in Berlin by Tchoban & Kuznetsov and SPEECH Burea