The Kaneda - MOKO Museum will test the current phenomena of museums as “events”, a trend which both drives

and limits the possibilities for museum architecture to function as a lens  between visitors and artifacts. The paradigm of “destination architecture” provokes the question as to whether a building dedicated to the aims of

preservation, display, and transmission of knowledge should upstage the very content it was designed to transmit. The studio will examine the notion of seductive artifacts against that of architecture as a seductive event, perhaps finding new opportunities for synthesis between them or  a stark need for the development of a new approach to the problem.

At MOKO, artifacts may be DISPLAYED and celebrated, and architecture  may fetishize them. But like any museum, MOKO will also endeavor to DISPLAY, STORE and RESTORE them. Storage of a collection is  understood in starkly different terms, the only imperatives being those of security, restoration, and preservation. These two ways of framing the collection, corresponding to the “back of house” and “front of house” zones of museum programming, will be crucial to the development of MOKO and in defining its role as part of an evolving urban landscape.

​

from CPP arc 502

​