Alessandro and Francesco Mendini, 2007

One morning in 1987, Mr. Frans Haks rang the doorbell of our studio in Milan. We certainly had no idea that he was about to open one of the most important episodes of our professional life. We did not know him at all, only to discover a smiling, energetic, poetic and extravagant person. He immediately asked us: "Would you like to design the new museum of Groningen for us? I want it to be like a polyphonic piece of music." That brief and unexpected visit, and that request, originated in an unrepeatable experience of friendship and design. Haks was brilliant at thinking of things in a creative and atypical way, rooted in the fusion between his ideas and his interest in all invention that was devoid of norms and predictability. This method he had of living and working oscillated between passion and cynicism. His profound knowledge of the history of visual arts and music made a strong mark on our project for the Museum of Groningen, and on our lives as well. Frans Haks, our great "museum friend". After knowing him, a museum will always be a Haks-Museum to us... Haks asked us for a polyphonic piece of architecture. His joyous and dynamic museum concept led him to the simulation of a universal museum, a sum of mini-museums, an infinite system that would intrinsically become a museum. Its architecture would be part of the display of artwork. This concept was precursory for what would later become fashionable. He wanted an evolved language, yet one that was integrated in the pureness and ecology of the urban fabric of Groningen's historical center, respectful of its traditions. He was thinking of an exemplary monument that would be abounding in cultural contents and have an image that would acquire international resonance. It is not often in today's harsh, violent and drama-filled world that we have the opportunity to realize a dream: the idyll of an "Acropolis of Art" in the detachment and padded silence of a small island, attached to the city only by two slender bridges. This is the gift that Haks gave us, an "Art Ship". Thought was given to the visual arts and the relationships between people. To him, art represented a totalizing utopia, a prime element of meditation and sentiment. Art was not just to be admired, respected and documented, but become a friend to live with in an almost domestic way. The museum was to be a kind of imaginary house. He aimed at an intriguing museum that was part piazza, part church, part theater, part nature: a poetic place were people could get lost in fanciful labyrinths, where they could find unreal and dilated rhythms of time, and spaces full of sensorial variables that were evanescent and immaterial. Visitors would be homologous to the exposed artwork; they would be pieces of art themselves, in affectionate and philological contact with all objects and situations observed in the museum. For contemporary artists it was to be a human link with their public. Around the tower we assembled a collage of very different pieces of architecture, each of which is suited to contain every aspect of what he asked for. Extremely ancient objects together with the extremely new, the small with the big, craftsmanship with industrial design, installations, sounds, photographs, videos and documents of art from the most disparate corners of the world. Its system of spatial relationships was made to make this the fascinating and dialectic stage of which he was both director and starring actor, fully dedicated to his public. Maybe, we hope, we made him happy.

<- Return