Designed by the world-famous architect Frank Gehry, the Extreme Model Railroad and Contemporary Architecture Museum in Massachusetts, USA, has been unveiled. Located in North Adams, the museum aims to exhibit model trains running through a landscape of remarkable modern architecture from the last 150 years.
Image: EMRCA
A recent video has been revealed with a sneak peek at the design of the Gehry train museum. The museum is assigned a location near another famous museum, known as the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art [MoCA].
According to the New York Times, Thomas Krens, the former Guggenheim Museum Director and one of the founders of the Extreme Model Railroad and Contemporary Architecture Museum has stated in a phone interview, “We’re creating it with historical obsession and driving detail.” Krens is also the former director of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
Krens expects the number of visitors to the Extreme Model Railroad Museum to be double that of the neighboring Massachusetts MoCA, which is one of the largest centers for contemporary visual art and performing arts in the US.
Surprisingly, Gehry states that he has actually never been such a huge fan of trains during his childhood. He admitted in a phone interview, “Model railroads are not something I was infatuated with as a child. We were poor, and we didn’t have money to buy that stuff. I don’t know what a model railroad museum should look like.”
Estimated at 65 million dollars, the Extreme Model Railroad and Contemporary Architecture Museum is set to open its door to the public by 2021. A collection of over 100 model trains will drive themselves through the landscapes of many of the world’s most iconic buildings and landmarks such as The Empire State Building. The exhibition displays large-scale exhibits by Laurie Anderson, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jenny Holzer.
via MassLive
Interestingly, the replicas of famous bridges, buildings, and trains inside the Extreme Model Railroad and Contemporary Architecture Museum are designed by over 70 designers which include legendary architects such as the father of modernism Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright.
In order to provide the visitors of the Gehry museum with a bird’s eye view of the urban models, mezzanines have been designed for the museum.