Highway Gallery vs. Aqua Tower
“If traffic won’t come to the Art, why not bring Art to the traffic?”
Located in the United Arab Emirates, the Louvre Abu Dhabi is an art and civilization museum. With 260,000 square feet of museum campus and 86,000 square feet of galleries, the museum made itself the largest art museum in the Arabian Peninsula.
“On the occasion of the UAE Innovation Month, on the E/11 Sheikh Zayed Road that connects Dubai to Abu Dhabi, ten huge billboards of 9x6 meters were placed, representing giant reproductions of the most famous pieces in the museum’s collection.” — Kooness
It is typical to use street signage to keep visitors informed. However, Louvre took this strategy to the next level: they used billboards to identify the path towards the newly opened museum. They also launched the “Highway Gallery” program to keep visitors “in tune.” TBWA/RAAD creates this program (in partnership with the Abu Dhabi Media Company, Radio 1 FM, Classic FM, and Emarat FM) and installed ten significant art prints on EE/11 Sheikh Zayed highway. This innovation gives pleasure to the boring highway driving experience and enhances safety by unconsciously lowering driving speed.
How long is the [Highway Gallery] program?
Eighty-five percent of Abu Dhabi’s visitors come from Dubai each year. It is about 146km (91 miles) from Dubai International Airport to Louvre Abu Dhabi.
I have not visited the place myself. Yet, for visitors to have continuous visual and audio experience of art on this 36 miles long gallery(from exit 376/Kizad to the Louvre museum), the museum needs to create 3–4 minutes of art-story audio for each art billboard. For visitors traveling from the Abu Dhabi International Airport, the audio program could have a more concise version (about 2 minutes) for these ten billboards.
Contrary to Louvre’s geometric-patterned dome (180 meters in diameter, earthquake resist) that tries to capture all their collections underneath, this innovative audio program has expanded the arts and culture beyond the museum walls.
Aqua Tower, Chicago
A Natural-born wayfinding indicator
Aqua Tower at Chicago is a natural-born wayfinding-character building. You may wonder why I put this tower in such a category. This tower is not visible from the Monroe Harbor, not noticeable from the Chicago River (at riverboat position), and neither the tallest building inside Chicago Loop.
“Is it because of its curvature skin?” you might ask.
Not quite.
Recognizable structure and its unique staging
Aqua Tower only become the most visible one when sightseers arrive N Columbus Drive and E Randolph intersection. Despite not being observable and not the tallest tower on the east side of Chicago Loop (if we draw a line along Michigan Ave at Chicago Loop, St. Regis Chicago is the tallest, Aon center is the second tallest one.) The front plaza of Aon center opens up a gap and sets an ideal foreground for Aqua tower.
This tower has a two-story low-rise retail podium that elevated the tower from the street level. Its roof garden at the podium pushes this building even further back when pedestrians approach the building from the south. This gesture maximizes the southern sun exposure for the roof garden and leaves an opening for people to see Lake Shore East Park-an Urban Botanic Garden.
Imagine I was a tourist, finished my tour at Millenium Park (or Maggie Daley Park), and tried to return to my hotel (one at the northern hotel cluster close to the river). I would walk towards Aon Center, see the curved building through Columbus and Randolph intersection, walk along Columbus Drive to find my hotel. the tower’s curvature balconies would be so distinctive that I wouldn’t miss it even under the dimmed streetlight in the evenings.
Meanwhile, I might discover a Lake Shore Park that I could probably hang out with during the evening. On the other hand, if I chose the taxi to explore this area instead of by foot, I might also miss the great opportunity to visit Lake Shore Park after leaving Millennium Park.
=======================================
Interested to know more about how to see our places? Sign up Medium to get my next idea on places and cities.
If you like this article, you might be also interested in this
