Horizon Line: Synthesising Allusions to the Vernacular with Contemporary Abstraction, the New Parrish Art Museum Encapsulates the Changing Dynamic between Art, Landscape and Architecture

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CRITICISM

EMMANUEL PETIT

Opened last November, the new Parrish Art Museum displays works from the museum's permanent collection of American art, encompassing paintings, works on paper and sculpture amassed over its 115-year history. The building is sited next to the village of Southampton, one of Long Island's most affluent communities and a weekend refuge for many Manhattaners who periodically flee the island for the bucolic idyll of the Hamptons. A 90-minute drive takes you from the traffic-congested city to the serene dune-and-shrub landscape of Long Island. Amid the disjointed, small-scale beachside buildings, Herzog & de Meuron nest an abstractly detailed, longitudinal bar with a double-pitched roof set on a strict east-west orientation to catch north light for galleries through rhythmically-placed skylights.

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In this project, H&dM revisit two of the key themes that have come to define their architecture. On one hand, they see architecture as emerging from the genius loci, and on the other, they interpret it as the tautological tectonics of the 'house'. While these two aspects reconfirm their own penchant for a phenomenological architecture, perfected over the years and shared with contemporaries such as Steven Holl and Peter Zumthor, in respect of this latest project, one consequential question remains. What should one think about the harmonious, attuned and seamless coexistence of art and architecture at the Parrish Museum and the insistence on genius loci at a time when notions of …