MAD Architects’ FENIX is the World’s First Art Museum Dedicated to Migration

MAD’s principal Ma Yansong says that he initially had “mixed feelings” about the existing “heavy” structure which was once the largest warehouse in Europe. He, however, kept 90 percent of it thanks to the light-filled building’s potential to host exhibitions and programming. “I had to make the center more transparent so that the waterfront and the surrounding park can be connected,” he says. The architect’s touch—the mammoth whirlwind of a central piece that reaches 98 feet in height—operates as a “strategic” interlocked staircase which leads visitors outside to the planted roof after the second exhibition floor. “The two intertwined wooden staircases allow the public to encounter one another and create a form of connectivity,” he explains.

For the museum’s director Anne Kremers, the invitation for connection lies in the heart of the museum’s mission. “Millions of people boarded on ships here to travel to other continents, and this point of departure is very important for us,” she explains. With its long history of colonialism and cross-continental trade, the harbor where FENIX is located was once home to mainland Europe’s first Chinatown—it today operates as a multi-purpose residential and commercial area in the city of almost 200 different nationalities. “We would like to keep this heritage to tell stories,” she adds.

MAD’s first museum project in Europe embodies the firm’s signature bulbous forms and effortless finishes through the anchoring tornado form. Kinetic and winding, the structure was merely an easy feat to install. The main challenge was to clad the fluid shape in an organic rhythm of reflective metal while letting it cut through the glass roofing. “Most buildings are cubic and repeat the same construction geometry,” says Ma, “but we wanted to depart from the industrial look and have a unique floating presence.” The cantilever was adjusted to convey the weightless feeling with a tight structural calculation of the steel structure. The solution to create unique 297 metal panels with millimetrically different curvature deviations came from advanced robot technology which the team has recently utilized for the facade of the upcoming Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles. Their goal, Ma explains, was to “create a form that looked as it came out of the nature because unlike mass production of modern architecture, nothing repeats itself in nature.”

The inaugural program celebrates the human aspect of drift and relocation, including an installation of 2,000 suitcases in a labyrinthian layout on the ground floor. In various materials and ages, the luggage have been collected from donors from across the world to underline the wealth of immigration stories as well as their unified realities of survival and search. The group exhibition, All Directions: Art That Moves You, includes 150 works from the museum’s growing art collection, featuring heavy-hitter global artists such as filmmaker Steve McQueen, photographer Rineke Dijkstra, sculptor Yinka Shonibare CBE, and painter Abdalla Al Omari. And a photography show, titled The Family of Migrants, narrates stories of leaving home and starting anew through the work 136 photographers from 55 countries. Mobility, longing, and hope dominate the art on display.  

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• Cultural

• Iwan Baan
• MAD Architects
• Museums
• Osman Can Yerebakan
• Rotterdam