De Young Museum

Museums have a vexed relationship to their surroundings. They are constructed as important public buildings yet the requirement of protecting the works that they contain causes the insides of museums to be closed off from the public space outside. As a result, the outside and inside of museums often are incongruous: when one views a museum from the outside, the building is in relation to its surroundings; when inside, one feels little relation to the outside world.

San Francisco’s de Young Museum, which reopened in October housed in a new building designed by Herzog & de Meuron, presents a special case of this problem. Located in Golden Gate Park the museum in surrounded by urban park. The primary feature of the building is the eight story copper tower that calls to mind a modest skyscraper and the tower of a fort.

Neighbors have objected to the broken sight lines caused by the tower. Undoubtedly, the contrast between the brown metallic tower and the trees is jarring. Golden Gate Park, however, is not a pure natural environment but a constructed urban space. Like Olmstead’s Central Park, GG Park was a response to the urban environment. Developed in the last decades of the nineteenth century by John McLaren, the park was created through extensive planting of what had been barren, windswept sand dunes. Thus the park it is as much artifice as any skyscraper.

The de Young tower reminds us of this relationship. Just a bit taller than the surrounding trees, the top of the tower stands in a playful relationship to the park. Its twist suggests the organic possibilities in built architecture. And while the neighbors can see the tower, when one looks from the surrounding neighborhood, trees hide the majority of the building’s mass. This playful relationship carries over to the interior of the building where rooms look out on interior gardens. The city encloses the park, the park encloses the museum, the museum encloses the park.