News

Zaha Hadid has won the (British) Design Museum's Design of the Year award for the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan, the largest cultural centre in the Caucasus and Middle-Asian region. Congratulations!

Lordculture has planned the operational aspects of the site as well as cultural programs, partnerships and communication strategies, and provided the training plan and services for the future staff.

Luminato Festival is the international multi-arts festival for people open to having art change their outlook on the world. For ten days each June, the Luminato Festival transforms theatres, parks and public spaces across the city of Toronto and creates a home for artists to come play, share and create. Lord Cultural Resources has worked on the strategic plan for Luminato and we can hardly wait for the new season.

Jorn Weisbrodt, Luminato's Artistic Director, shares his excitement about the upcoming Luminato Festival:
"The festival is 10 days away and there is not really time to breathe but the excitement is definitely felt all around – but all in a good way. Artists are starting to arrive in town this weekend. I will head over to Banff to see a final run through of Kid Koala’s Nufonia Must Fall Live – a graphic novel animated in real time with a live soundtrack. I am really excited to see this as I doubt anything like this has been done before. I cannot wait to see all the sets and the direction by the Oscar nominated KK Barrett. What an amazing artist Kid Koala is to always come up with something new and fun. And the great thing is there is no language, it is something for all cultures and all audiences. Who does not want to see a robot falling in love with another robot?".

ZOOM Kindermuseum (ZOOM Children’s Museum) is one of the largest and most important cultural establishments for children in Austria. Opened in 2001 in Vienna’s famed Museums Quartier, ZOOM offers trend-setting exhibits. Lord Cultural Resources completed the feasibility study and development plan for the Museum in 1993.

Today, ZOOM Children’s Museum is celebrating its twentieth anniversary with new and ambitious plans to open a satellite children’s museum in the new Weltmuseum in the Hofburg. Congratulations!

After years of planning, the National September 11 Museum created to document and memorialize the devastating attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, opened to the public on May 21, 2014 in New York. The opening followed a May 15 ceremony and a six-day dedication period during which the museum stayed open 24 hours a day so that survivors, the families of victims, rescue and recovery workers, and neighborhood residents and business owners could preview the 110,000 square feet of exhibitions and tributes that document the history and memorialize the nearly 3,000 people killed that day.

Lord Cultural Resources provided Institutional Planning to define the concept of the Memorial Museum and plan for its programs, collections, facilities, structure and overall operations. We were also on the design team of the Norwegian architectural firm Snøhetta as museum planning consultants for the Visitor Center, and prepared a Business Plan.

The David Livingstone Centre is a biographical museum dedicated to the life and work of the explorer and missionary David Livingstone. In 2013,Lord Cultural Resources was commissioned to develop a Master Plan to redevelop the David Livingstone Centre as a sustainable, relevant and engaging destination in in Blantyre, UK. Our team developed a plan that identified a strong mission to take the Center into the 21st century and options for sustainable development and management of the site; formed the foundation of subsequent design briefs; and informed subsequent business planning. Lord Cultural Resources led the Master Plan with Gareth Hoskins Architects as our sub-contractors. The project is now proceeding into detailed architectural design.

Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages Shelly Glover and Minister of Foreign Affairs John Baird, along with Minister of State (Multiculturalism) Tim Uppal announced on May 12, 2014, the awarding of the National Holocaust Monument National Design Competition to the team led by Lord Cultural Resources. The National Holocaust Monument, established through the National Holocaust Monument Act by the Government of Canada, will ensure a permanent, national symbol that will honour and commemorate the victims of the Holocaust and recognize Canadian survivors. The Monument will stand in Ottawa, ON, symbolically located across from the Canadian War Museum. Lord Cultural Resources will lead the multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural team that includes architect Daniel Libeskind, Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, Quebec-based landscape architect Claude Cormier and University of Toronto Holocaust scholar Doris Bergen.

Construction is under way on main hall of new Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) expected to open in August 2015 in Giza, Egypt. GEM will house the largest display of ancient Egyptian artefacts in the world, including treasures from the tomb of King Tutankhamun. The Museum lies on 117 acres of land (90,000 square meters) and is now in its third and final phase of construction, which began in January 2014.

The future Museum of the American Revolution (MoAR) is to be built at the corner of 3rd and Chestnut Streets in Philadelphia, PA, just steps away from Independence Hall. The building, now on the site of the former Independence National Historical Park Visitor Center built in 1976, has been closed since 2002, and ownership was transferred to MoAR in 2010 through a land exchange. Demolition on the existing building is anticipated to begin in March 2014, and construction to begin during the summer of 2014. The museum building, designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, is scheduled to open in late 2016. The opening salvo of the Museum of the American Revolution took place on March 5. Lord Cultural Resources provided management consulting, facility planning and public programming services for the MoAR project.

The Museum of Fine Arts Budapest and the Városliget Zrt., owned by the Hungarian State, announced an architectural competition for the design of five museum buildings within the framework of the Liget Budapest Project. The five buildings will be located within the area of City Park Budapest (Városliget). The scope of work includes: construction of the new buildings, a complete renewal of the green area of the City Park, and renovation of the institutions already present. Liget Budapest will be one of Budapest’s leading tourist and cultural destinations and a unique family park. Lordculture has been assisting Varosliget in planning of the Museum of Ethnography and the New National Gallery & Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art.

In November 2013, Laure Colliex, Carolyne Krummenacker and Aline Mandai from Lordculture presented at the international workshop on Budapest's Liget cultural quarter planned for the City Park. Read more at www.ligetbudapest.org and www.szepmuveszeti.hu.

The Jan and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis, CA, broke ground on March 1, 2014 at the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for Performing Arts. Lord Cultural Resources developed the architectural program and advised on the design-build team selection process.

Read more at shremmuseum.ucdavis.edu or watch UC Davis' video on Art in the Making: