The notion of designing a history museum for the 21st century is a bit of an ironic endeavor for an architect. It is impossible to design a history museum without developing a philosophical perspective about the meaning of new architecture in the context of the history of human culture. Most architects trained in the ModernistBauhaus tradition are taught to ignore history and to allow functional concerns and new technologies to drive each architectural effort to be a revolutionary statement capturing the spirit of the age. By contrast, most historians see history as a continuum: more evolution than revolution. In architectural terms ‘21st century history museum’ is an oxymoron.

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