Temporary Museum

The Temporary Museum is an intimate pavilion for art in the public domain. Built in one of the most visited parks in Amsterdam, the museum conceals a space for a secluded, personal experience of the work on display. Developed at a time of drastic measures and renewed physical relationships to the people and spaces around us, The Temporary Museum explores the significance of an exhibition space in the public sphere.

Informed by a variety of architectural references outside the realm of the public building, it explores how to deal with the relationship between inside and outside, between openness and closeness; searching for an intimacy and sensitivity in experience. More like a hut or a chapel, the pavilion departs from the conventional spaces of the contemporary art museum, exploring the possibility of a human and specific 'white cube’. A place of solitude and contemplation rather than a big spectacle, the Temporary Museum encourages close interaction between visitor, artworks, and architecture.

Inspired by the ultimate temporary structure – the tent – the building is simultaneously mysterious and primitive. Hidden within the black exterior, four white walls seem to hang from the sky; forming an atrium at once compressed and monumental. Around it, the wooden A-frame structure is exposed, creating small niches. A glazed annex and two small windows frame views to the outside, or let park visitors sneak a glance of the exhibition inside.

Materiality, expression and representation derive from a research-based approach where standard building materials merge with experimentation. The outer layer is made from recycled cotton canvas, stitched together and coated with tar. The coating protects the wooden structure, much like a gigantic raincoat, while also recalling the history of the site as a former coal gas factory, where tar was a residual product. Conscious of the temporary nature of the project, the entire structure can be dismantled and used elsewhere.

Type: temporary pavilion and exhibition space
Location: Amsterdam
Surface: 40m²
For: Unfair Amsterdam
When: September 2021
Team: Tomas Dirrix, Ada Finci Terseglav, Stefan Hutterer, Julia Strömland
With: Fiction Factory
Photography: Max Hart Nibbrig