I was so sorry to see the old DeYoung Museum and Academy of Sciences torn down. I'll never understand why we in America don't preserve our historical architecture. I don't even like to go there anymore. Thank you for posting this series - very interesting.
Keeping historic buildings is difficult especially since in San Francisco, a reworked old building need to be seismically upgraded which is quite costly.
You got that right. The De Young changed from something fun and exciting to go to, full of all kinds of things from all over the world. The Academy of Science improved, but under Newsom the museum became something totally dull and full of empty space and no historical references that had no agenda, and instead were full of people wanting to transform America into a bland socialist blah. Blah BLAH. I finally saw the de Young after building it up to my 3 year old only to find there was not a single thing she found interesting or exciting. None of the things I raved about seeing as a child were there anymore. Including the pond out front. It's a big block of nothing. Socialist. Leninist monoarchitecture. The Academy is ok, although it still has less mystery than it once had.
I always get a distinctly “Jawa sandcrawler” aesthetic from the de young. Love that building. It does indeed look like some sort of large craft placed directly on the landscape. Thanks for this very thorough analysis of the two buildings.
Yup, thanks. Looking at the work of Herzog & de Meuron, they have a very wide range of "looks" that their projects end up with which seems to indicate they can with with their clients and settings and are quite open to the outcomes. In the Mid-Winter Exposition of the 1890's, the concourse area was full of eclectic structures of many persuasions. The current de Young vis a vis the Academy of Sciences fits in the same mix, albeit with architectural forms current a century later.
such a well-written, deeply analytical, and not to mention poetic look at these buildings. you can really tell that you are a highly knowledgeable expert and that you put a lot of time into observing and analyzing these buildings. im not an architect but i still enjoyed your insights.
Thank you. I'm trying to find decision points that make sense of architecture to non architects. And on the other hand, these days I don't really care if my comments don't make sense to architects!
Thanks you. It really helps to have two really different building almost near each other to compare If you have Masterclass.com, Frank Gehry has a couple of lectures in his masterclass where he goes into the search for and embodiment of feeling in design. Here's the trailer for the class: ruclips.net/video/AQe3nUy0gMk/видео.html
The academy and the park was always the best days as a SF kid. It was always an adventure. Gators, sharks, cobras, piranha, octopus, anaconda skeletons, fossils dinosaurs and a planetarium!
Great history on the architecture reconstruction of the two museums. Very nice architectural historical approach. Thanks for sharing! I did my own review of de Young as well if you want to check it out. Thanks LY!
The historic buildings formerly there in the city park were much more grandiose than the current buildings covered here.. which are mere shadows of the past. Too bad there doesn't appear to be any videos of what was there before the replacements
BTW, I searched on RUclips and they have somehow hidden most of the stuff about the original DeYoung. I am not sure why. You are about the only source (on YT). I couldn't find people who had posted home movies of the museum. Of course, when I was a kid, and snuck pictures using a single use camera, they had signs saying "no photography allowed" so maybe that explains it. It's just weird how you'd think that more people would find the old DeYoung (pun intended) far more memorable than this current corporate-style bland Googolplex. Even MOMA is so much better....
I think the posting of "home movies" are really postings of video from our cellphones which did not have decent video until the later part of 2000-2010. But I bet someone has old home movies of the de Young somewhere. They just have not converted them to digital format and uploaded them to RUclips. You might try the Prelinger Archives archive.org/details/prelinger
I went to the new De Young soviet-style modern art museum with no fun spaces or little mysterious rooms that I loved and even dreamed about sneaking in and staying in overnight (like the kid's book "From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs Basil D Frankweiler" where two runaway kids stay in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or maybe it was the Smithsonian..... I was so disappointed and the bland suburban shopping mall design he approved, I guess. Newsom was so intent on doing all this stuff to show his drive to have a monolithic Soviet-style state that he did all he could, as Mayor, to crush fun and independent thinking. You know, I knew he was bad news when he started crowing things like "it's gonna happen whether you like it or not". Doesn't matter whether it was about gay marriage or a Covid lockdown. Anyone who tells the taxpayers that he will do what he wants is a creepy politician, just like his Aunt Nancy. I'm glad my mom didn't see what happened. She used to take me to the museum at least once a month and we thought it was so cool. Academy of Science is much better, it's actually pretty similar to the museum I liked only with really new neat things (although eliminating the Planetarium was a serious mistake. What they have now is NOT a planetarium. It's a mini movie theater. Completely different experience. To see what the Planetarium was once like, you'd need to watch "Rebel Without a Cause" at Griffith Observatory, where they show a similar experience. It was so cool. ) The Rainforest in the new Academy makes me sweat like you wouldn't believe. Nothing more embarrassing than sweating so much people comment. Still cool. Both museums have so much less content than they once did. Part of the dumbing down, I suppose.
The de Young's design was influenced by its Board particularly Dede. Wilsey. The design of the museum was already done and construction had begun before Newsom became mayor.
As a youngster, the Academy of Science was a place of wonder and scary looking creatures. Yup the new one does not have that, but perhaps is also because I am an old man now and not a 5 year old.
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
Found this while planning a coming trip to both of these. EXCELLENT history and commentary!⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Thanks
I was so sorry to see the old DeYoung Museum and Academy of Sciences torn down. I'll never understand why we in America don't preserve our historical architecture. I don't even like to go there anymore. Thank you for posting this series - very interesting.
Keeping historic buildings is difficult especially since in San Francisco, a reworked old building need to be seismically upgraded which is quite costly.
You got that right. The De Young changed from something fun and exciting to go to, full of all kinds of things from all over the world. The Academy of Science improved, but under Newsom the museum became something totally dull and full of empty space and no historical references that had no agenda, and instead were full of people wanting to transform America into a bland socialist blah. Blah BLAH. I finally saw the de Young after building it up to my 3 year old only to find there was not a single thing she found interesting or exciting. None of the things I raved about seeing as a child were there anymore. Including the pond out front. It's a big block of nothing. Socialist. Leninist monoarchitecture. The Academy is ok, although it still has less mystery than it once had.
I always get a distinctly “Jawa sandcrawler” aesthetic from the de young. Love that building. It does indeed look like some sort of large craft placed directly on the landscape. Thanks for this very thorough analysis of the two buildings.
Yup, thanks. Looking at the work of Herzog & de Meuron, they have a very wide range of "looks" that their projects end up with which seems to indicate they can with with their clients and settings and are quite open to the outcomes. In the Mid-Winter Exposition of the 1890's, the concourse area was full of eclectic structures of many persuasions. The current de Young vis a vis the Academy of Sciences fits in the same mix, albeit with architectural forms current a century later.
such a well-written, deeply analytical, and not to mention poetic look at these buildings. you can really tell that you are a highly knowledgeable expert and that you put a lot of time into observing and analyzing these buildings. im not an architect but i still enjoyed your insights.
Thank you. I'm trying to find decision points that make sense of architecture to non architects. And on the other hand, these days I don't really care if my comments don't make sense to architects!
great work! thanks for the tour!
wonderful hajur
Thank You !
I really liked this analysis, and I agree completely. Ive been to both museums countless times but never thought about the feeling of the architecture
Thanks you. It really helps to have two really different building almost near each other to compare If you have Masterclass.com, Frank Gehry has a couple of lectures in his masterclass where he goes into the search for and embodiment of feeling in design. Here's the trailer for the class: ruclips.net/video/AQe3nUy0gMk/видео.html
On my browser (Firefox) the videos page is very hard to read because of the colors red/green combination
The academy and the park was always the best days as a SF kid.
It was always an adventure. Gators, sharks, cobras, piranha, octopus, anaconda skeletons, fossils dinosaurs and a planetarium!
Yup that was my experience also from the late 1940's through the mid 1950's. In hindsight, the de Young then was an amazing and strange museum!
Great history on the architecture reconstruction of the two museums. Very nice architectural historical approach. Thanks for sharing! I did my own review of de Young as well if you want to check it out. Thanks LY!
Thanks, what's the link to your de Young review.
thank you.
You're welcome
The historic buildings formerly there in the city park were much more grandiose than the current buildings covered here.. which are mere shadows of the past. Too bad there doesn't appear to be any videos of what was there before the replacements
BTW, I searched on RUclips and they have somehow hidden most of the stuff about the original DeYoung. I am not sure why. You are about the only source (on YT). I couldn't find people who had posted home movies of the museum. Of course, when I was a kid, and snuck pictures using a single use camera, they had signs saying "no photography allowed" so maybe that explains it. It's just weird how you'd think that more people would find the old DeYoung (pun intended) far more memorable than this current corporate-style bland Googolplex. Even MOMA is so much better....
I think the posting of "home movies" are really postings of video from our cellphones which did not have decent video until the later part of 2000-2010. But I bet someone has old home movies of the de Young somewhere. They just have not converted them to digital format and uploaded them to RUclips. You might try the Prelinger Archives archive.org/details/prelinger
@@lymarchvideo Thanks for the tip.
@@lymarchvideo Thanks for the tip.
I went to the new De Young soviet-style modern art museum with no fun spaces or little mysterious rooms that I loved and even dreamed about sneaking in and staying in overnight (like the kid's book "From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs Basil D Frankweiler" where two runaway kids stay in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or maybe it was the Smithsonian..... I was so disappointed and the bland suburban shopping mall design he approved, I guess. Newsom was so intent on doing all this stuff to show his drive to have a monolithic Soviet-style state that he did all he could, as Mayor, to crush fun and independent thinking.
You know, I knew he was bad news when he started crowing things like "it's gonna happen whether you like it or not". Doesn't matter whether it was about gay marriage or a Covid lockdown. Anyone who tells the taxpayers that he will do what he wants is a creepy politician, just like his Aunt Nancy. I'm glad my mom didn't see what happened. She used to take me to the museum at least once a month and we thought it was so cool.
Academy of Science is much better, it's actually pretty similar to the museum I liked only with really new neat things (although eliminating the Planetarium was a serious mistake. What they have now is NOT a planetarium. It's a mini movie theater. Completely different experience. To see what the Planetarium was once like, you'd need to watch "Rebel Without a Cause" at Griffith Observatory, where they show a similar experience. It was so cool. )
The Rainforest in the new Academy makes me sweat like you wouldn't believe. Nothing more embarrassing than sweating so much people comment. Still cool.
Both museums have so much less content than they once did. Part of the dumbing down, I suppose.
The de Young's design was influenced by its Board particularly Dede. Wilsey. The design of the museum was already done and construction had begun before Newsom became mayor.
sorry im a sucker for classic the de young before the remodel was better
As a youngster, the Academy of Science was a place of wonder and scary looking creatures. Yup the new one does not have that, but perhaps is also because I am an old man now and not a 5 year old.