1993 - Museum of the 20th Century

The main ideas that arose from this year’s competition saw a lot of socio-political and contemporary values being expressed in the entries. What made this different to a lot of other competitions was that they had to design a museum for a non-physical thing, that is, a period of time. The entries that did well conveyed the concept of “moving through time” and a lot of the entries were very elaborate in the programmatic aspect as can be seen in the winning entry where the museum resembles a maze which allows the viewer to journey through the different periods of the 20^th century. It symbolised the aspect of the increasingly dynamic cosmopolitan world that we live in.

Since the museum is to depict a period of 100 years, there are a lot of issues that had risen during that time. The entries that did well spoke of the political issues, the social changes, the technological feats, the cultural shifts and even the destruction of civilizations during the 20^th century. The themes they addressed were very explicitly expressed, such as the second place entry which revolved around the production and consumption of the 20^th century and was a museum that walked one through the detriment and waste of the 20^th century.

The winning entry is imaginative in that it encompasses the idea of time and that the maze is a metaphor for the different paths that opened up during the century. The old solution was to create something that is specific to the centrepieces in the museum but in this case it was the items that connected themselves to the museum.

The program and configuration for this entry is very elegant in its simplicity. The other entries that deal with the “space-time” idea seem to be a lot more chaotic and unstructured whereas this design is so easily understood. It is ingenious in the way it incorporates just 3 architectural concepts of walls, stairs and volumes to create such a dynamic space.