Black out

Richard Meier is one of the globe’s foremost – and most recognisable – modern architects; a pioneering, Pritzker Prize-winning visionary who has led his own practice since 1963. In the latest of Plane—Site’s enlightening Time-Space-Existence shorts, Meier eloquently muses on his love of museum architecture and the existentially reflective appeal of the colour white (and the subsequent excitement of creating a building in black).

His interest in creating museums stems from the fact that, despite a diversity of collections and individual contexts, they have a fundamental purpose of being a ‘public place of coming together for enjoyment but also for learning’. His Getty Museum in Los Angeles, Meier explains, is a great example of place where visitors want to see in and outside of – for both its art and meditative spatial context. Its striking white edifice is almost holistic in effect – expressing, he explains, a quality of light that only emphasises the beauty of the nature around it.

There’s an overarching retrospective bent to the film, too, and Meier is nothing less than poetic in the summation of his portfolio. Architecture, he states, doesn’t happen quickly. ‘When I look back and see how the buildings have aged I’m actually gratified... I feel there’s a timeless quality. They’ve just weathered the time of their existence and continue to have the quality of the human scale experience.’ That spatial, highly personal, experience, he concludes –  ‘That’s what architecture is all about.’