Building You Have To See Before You Die

Herg`e Museum , Louvainla-Neuve, Brussels, Belgium...open to the public in May 2009. Inside , the Pritzer Prize -winning de Portamparc has captured the playful spirit of Herg`e's legalcy, with large comic-strip-shaped windows, vibrant and colorful supporting elements , and curving , elevated footbridges connecting four galleries.

Acropolis Museum , Athens, Greece....Bernard tschumi, whose groundbreaking works include the iridesent   BLUE  residential tower in Manhattan and the avantgarde Parc de la Villette in Paris, opted  for a simple , three-story composition to house the most treasured collections of sculptures and other artifacts of  ancient Greece . The new Acropolis Museum , open in 2009.

Iber`e Camargo  Foundation , Porto Alegre, Brazil ,..Porto Alegre in Brazil is defing itself as a budding arts and design community, and now . The Iber`e Camargo Foundation building , which opened in June 2008, houses a collection of work from the eponymous artist, one of Brazil's greatest. Given the building's narrow plot, wedged between a highway and river - Siza used his trademark pragmatic approach - much of his work is know for it's sensitivity to local topography  and moderist detailing.

MAXXI  Museum , Rome , Italy...Over the past decade , the Bagdad-born architect Zaha Hadid ...she was a logical choice to take on Rome's new MAXXI Museum, which opened in May 2010 as the first public gallery in Italy devoted to comtemporary creativity. The monochrome interior walls, staircases and other elements feature Hadid's trademark fluidly and drama.

Dresden Military Museum , Dresden , Germany....Renowned architect Daniel Libeskind  , a polish architect of Jewish descent who has lived in the United States since 1959 , is no novice to military museums  (he designed the Imperial War Museum in the U.K.)Non is he a memory of loss , such as the Jewish Museum  in Berlin  and his most celebrated project , overseeing the rebuilding of the World Trade center  in New York City. The  Dresden Military Museum , expected to open later in 2010.

Tate Modern Annex , Londan , U.K. ...If gehry's Guggenheim set the standard for purpose-built museums , then the Swiss architects  Herzog & de Meuron did so for converting an existing building into one of the world's great cultural palaces. Miraculously (yet subtly) tranformed from a disused power station on the Thames, the Tate Morden is now ten years old and out-grown itself.(It receives five million visitors a year, double the initial estimate.) New exhibitions spaces and social eares are needed , so a new annex, also by Herzog & de Meuron, is currently under construction , with a deadline to open on the same  date as the 2012 London Olympic Games.

Salvador Dali Museum , St. Peterburg, Florida....veteran architect Yann Weymount of Tampa-based HOK studio, who worked alongside I.M Pei in the overhaul of the Louvre in Paris , designed the dali Museum, a huge , hurricance-proof , monolith featuring a glass sluglike element that appears to crawl through the building and around the  facade , a metaphor for Dali's signature juxaposition of the classical fantastical.

Museum Liaunig , Neuhaus , Austria....Museum  Liaunig , which open in August 2008 in southern Carinthia region of Austria, is as avant-garge as the collection of contempoary Austrian art inside. The  main body of the museum , which resembles a mammoth rectangular tube, cuts through the upper plateau of a hillside. A semi-subterranean hall opens out to the gallery, a cantilevered light box with majestic  views over this picturesgue pocket of Austria.

Museum of Liverpool, Liverpool, U.K.  The gritty city of Liverpool is about to acguire the largest , and certainly most striking , purpose built national museum in the U.K. in over a century - the high caliber creative brains behind the Muziekgebouw Concert Hall in Amsterdam - has created a bold structure that's elevated to allow the Merseyside promenade to flow through it. The building is perched on the water's edge next to The Three Graces, a trio of early 20th century  buildings. The  museum will be open to visitors in 2011.

Design Museum Holon ,Tel Aviv ,Israel ...It seems fitting that the commission of creating Holon's new Design Museum went to Ron Arad. The arcitect was born in TelAviv. and he is considered a key figure in contemporary design culture , not only in Israel  but also across the world. Displaying Arad's signature love of bold color , scuptural , curvilinear form  and technical invention , the Holon Desigh Museum has an external spiral ramp providing views over the building's  interior courtyard . Open in March 2010 , it's too early to tell if it'll make the same impact as Gehry's creation, but Arad's design is certainly the most significant of his architectural  oeuvre to date.

See you at the museums.