San Diego, California, USA
“It’s an important moment to aspire to a big gesture of change,” states Jennifer Luce Founder and Principal, LUCE et studio.
“This project with Mingei is a perfect confluence—it’s about the Park, the craft of fine art, and good design. And it’s one of the most authentic and humble institutions in the city that I believe in. It couldn’t be a better fit.”
Led by Jennifer Luce and her team at LUCE et studio, the $55 million renovations of original architect Bertram Goodhue’s 106-year-old Mingei International Museum is now complete exactly three years after closing for a transformative construction project.
Mingei International Museum’s transformation project has recently been awarded a 2022 International Architecture Awards Honorable Mention by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
Its major transformation on the Plaza de Panama in Balboa Park is one that has redefined its relationship to the Park, to the San Diego region, and to the world.
The restoration expresses a dynamically renewed commitment to the Museum’s vision and the community it serves.
Dubbed the “House of Charm,” the historic museum was built for the 1915–16 Panama-California Exposition, and like most buildings from that Exposition, it features Mission Revival Style architecture.
Bertram Goodhue, the master architect of the 1915–16 Panama-California Exposition, had urged that the temporary buildings on Balboa Park’s main avenue, El Prado, be torn down.
However, San Diego’s citizens scorned this advice. With the assistance of money from the federal government, they patched up the plaster palaces in 1922 and 1933.
This meant that most of the original buildings were available for re-use in the second exposition in 1935.
The Museum acquired its current name, “House of Charm”, during the park’s second Exposition held in from 1935 to 1936.
During Luce’s renovation, more than 10,000 square feet was added to the National Register of Historic Places-listed museum building, with the inclusion of exhibition and programming space, a theater, coffee bar, and education center.
And while those additions are not a continuation of the Mission Revival-style House of Charm building that the museum occupies, the extensions open the building up to access from within the park and its outer perimeter to create a more porous museum than was there before.
Mingei International Museum reveals the beauty of use in folk art, craft, and design from all eras and cultures of the world.
The word mingei, meaning ‘art of the people,’ was coined by the Japanese scholar Sōetsu Yanagi by combining the Japanese words for all people (min) and art (gei). Yanagi’s teachings awakened people to the essential need to make and use objects that are unfragmented expressions of head, heart, and hands.
Established in 1978, Mingei International Museum collects, conserves, and exhibits these arts of daily use–by anonymous craftsmen of ancient times, from traditional cultures of past and present, and by historical and contemporary designers.
Along with its permanent mainstays such as Niki de Saint Phalle’s playful outdoor sculpture Nikigator, the Mingei, which was established in 1978 and is dedicated to the collection, conservation, and exhibition of global craft, design, and folk art, will introduce bold new artworks to its collection.
The Dutch designer Petra Blaisse produced a large curtain for the museum’s new theater, while a glass sculpture from American artist Dale Chihuly is hung in the building’s preexisting bell tower.
As the design began to unfold,” Luce stated, “we infused an understanding that architects ‘make’ things and places that function, but that those functional elements can also be artfully crafted, in order to strengthen the experience.”
Project: Mingei International Museum Transformation
Architects: LUCE et studio
Original Architects: Bertram Goodhue (1915)
General Contractor: Layton Construction
Construction Management: Gardiner & Theobald
Client: Mingei International Museum
