George Lucas - American film director, producer and philanthropist - announced that he was abandoning plans to build his Museum of Narrative Art in Chicago. His team is urgently looking for a new platform for implementing an ambitious project - now in California, presumably in Los Angeles or San Francisco. The mayor of Los Angeles has already expressed his approval to these plans, and the mayor of Chicago - his regret, because the museum promised to become one of the landmarks of the city.
The Museum of Narrative Art of George Lucas was going to be built in one of the most picturesque places of Chicago - on the shores of Lake Michigan, near the famous Soldier Field stadium and the Museum Campus. The competition for the project of the museum building was won by the Beijing architectural bureau MAD, headed by architect Ma Jansong. As soon as the project was published, the Friends of the Parks public organization opposed the construction and started litigation against Lucas. Friends of the parks believe that a private development project cannot be erected in the public green zone. The project was supported by the legendary architect Frank Gehry, who himself was repeatedly attacked by the public for his outrageous buildings, including the famous Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. But the court has repeatedly made decisions in favor of Friends of the Parks, forcing designers to change their plans. Finally, tired of the ongoing litigation, Lucas announced that he was leaving this site.
The museum of narrative art of George Lucas should have been built in one of the most picturesque places of Chicago, on the shore of Lake Michigan. The project, created by the MAD bureau, was planned to be completed in four years - i.e. by the 2018th. Chinese architects designed the whole futuristic complex with a total area of 28 thousand square meters. The building, resembling a group of volcanoes with craters on the tops, is set on a platform amoeba. Inside - the exhibition halls, rooms for performances and film screenings. At the top of one of the "peaks" - a glass disc, inside which it was planned to place a restaurant with a panoramic view of the city. For the improvement of the area around the museum - and this is about 1.8 hectares - the local bureau Gang was in charge. According to the concept he proposed, the park around the museum was supposed to turn into a kind of open-space museum or an open-air museum space.
3D visualization of the building of the Museum of Narrative Art of George Lucas, designed by Beijing architectural bureau MAD. MAD's Chinese bureau, led by architect Ma Jansong, is making headway in the Americas. Most recently, it opened an office in Los Angeles. The bureau works in a futuristic manner, designing buildings with fluid, organic forms. Among the significant buildings of recent years - "wavy" skyscrapers in the Canadian Mississauga and the building of the Opera in Harbin, similar to the petals of a giant flower.
Chinese architects under the leadership of Ma Jansong designed a futuristic building with several peaks, resembling a group of volcanoes with craters. In his museum, the author of "Star Wars" and the saga of Indiana Jones is going to show everything related to storytelling in a visual language. In the future exhibition declared pictures of the French Impressionists and American realists, book illustrations, comics, photographs. In the section devoted to cinema, portraits of movie characters, scenes from films captured on posters and paintings, storyboards, sketches, sets and costumes will be presented. No cost and no acquaintance with the latest animation and special effects. A separate section of the exhibition will be devoted to digital art forms, including digital cinema and architecture. The museum will host all kinds of cultural events, performances and film screenings. But so far the museum, which is based on the personal collection of George Lucas, exists only in a virtual form: http://lucasmuseum.org/
