Redesigning the art museum
Boston is nearly 5,500 miles from Tel Aviv, Israel. But a new exhibit at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD) shortens that distance for local residents. “Lightfall: Herta & Paul Amir Building, Tel Aviv Museum of Art,” the exhibit on display at Gund Hall through March 4, is the story of a new building so unexpected and quirky that one critic called it “a surprise package” delivered to Israel’s capital, a city dominated otherwise by Brutalist and Bauhaus styles of architecture. Preston Scott Cohen’s Herta and Paul Amir Building, a dramatically prismatic structure of concrete and glass, rises out of a city arts plaza like the prow of a ship. Three of the five stories are below ground and hidden from the street, making them hard to see until you are very close. But inside it is hard not to see. A spiraling, 87-foot slash of curving light — a top-lit atrium...