The Bilbao Museum Of Car Showrooms

The partnership of architecture and the art world continues to produce interesting if not sometimes competing results. Many have used the ‘bilbao effect’ as a template to try and advance interest and development through the creation of modern iconic cultural buildings.

You get a sense from BMW’s recent building additions that they’ve taken a page from the art/architecture partnership and re-crafted it to exhibit their brand. The New York Times takes a look at the latest BMW delivery center and found the building nearly trumps the cars inside.

Officially opened last fall, BMW Welt (BMW World) located in Munich was designed by Vienna-based architectural firm Coop Himmelb(l)au. The firm strove to create an open, market-like experience using a lot of curves to slowly reveal the interior of the building.

As a result, the structure is imbued with a level of dynamic energy barely imaginable by an earlier generation of Machine Age enthusiasts. The glistening surfaces — of the building and of the cars — call to mind the obsession with machines displayed by the Italian Futurists. (One, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, famously claimed in a 1909 manifesto that “a roaring motor car that seems to run on shrapnel is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.”)

via NYT