• Journal of architectural history
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.7-22
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• 2007

In San Francisco, two new museums were recently built in 1995 and 2005. The one is San Francisco Museum of Modern Art designed by Mario Botta and the other is De Young Museum designed by Jacques Herzog & Pierre de Meuron. The urban settings for the museums are compared with each other and theories of the architects are evolved on different branches in the modernist trends. The theories and settings are followed by the representation in the forms, facades, interior spaces and towers. SFMOMA is located on the SoMa area, which was recently developed into a cultural urban core with Moscone Center and Buena Yerba Garden. De Young Museum was rebuilt in the old museum site in the Golden Gate Park. The one is on the context of urban artefacts and the other on the context of natural artefacts. To Botta, the museum in today's city plays a role analogous to that of the cathedral of yesterday. It is a place of common encounter and confrontation. The volume of SFMOMA which is geometrical and symmetric with double pylons. The frontality on the street and public green open space and the axiality of SFMOMA runs through the Buena Yerba Garden over Buena Yerba Center for the Arts are reminded us of an urban core with a religious monument and a city square. The staircase with grandiose design in the atrium seems to work as an altar with lighting from skylight above enhancing the liturgical ambiance. De Young Museum is shaped in a rectangle with long narrow courtyards. Three bands of volumes are juxtaposed and the nature flows into the museum corridors and galleries. The tower is distorted so as to be aligned to the street grids of the surrounding area. The copper panel of De Young Museum and natural context evoke modern concept of "machine in the garden". The two museums from different pedigrees of Modern Architecture are now major landmarks of SF and urban expressions for the 21st century.