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Curating Perspective: Peter Zuroweste

A Museum of Architecture in Boston’s Copley Square

This project reflects on the notion that architecture is, above all else, a way of seeing. It is the artifice we build to make sense of the world, to establish order from chaos, to restructure our environment. In this sense a Museum of Architecture collects and edits the ways in which we see the world. Its relationship to the City is not about how it looks or appears as a building in the City, but rather how as Architecture it curates a perspective on the City. Structure, circulation, aperture and enclosure are woven together to define a sequence of spaces which collage Copley Square with the Museum exhibits. As visitors journey up, around, and through the building, visual samples of the Square and the City intertwine with exhibition contents resulting in a fluid unfolding of curatorial narratives. The totality of this experience, a sort constellation of moments, is intended to leave the visitor with a refreshed and renewed perspective on the City. This is the intention of the Museum: that visitors exit through the same portal into which they entered, but return to the City with a light and vivid sense of newness, as if they’re seeing the Square for the first time again. How can a Museum of Architecture, even if it is just for a matter of minutes, break the routines, habits, and patterns of daily urban life to provide a more thoughtful space for curation of personal perspective?

Exterior Approach

Approach From Clarendon and Boylston (looking west)

Facade

Approach from Copley Square (looking north)

Entry

View at entrance, looking towards Museum Shop and Reception

City Gallery

View at the bottom of the Exhibit Cascade, at the intersection of a full-scale arch gallery and urban context gallery