By Bernard Tschumi (1)

The museum is about movement, it is about movement in space and time. You see objects but you also experience history. The way we conceived of the design for the Acropolis Museum was as a building that would function as an architectural promenade, as an extension of the existing landscape. The idea was that even before someone entered the museum, as they walked along the road, they would begin to be aware of the existence of the antiquities within the building.

Once inside the museum and walking through it, visitors would trod up a glass ramp that would partly enable observation of the findings from the excavations below, as well as the sculptures above. Everything would turn around the question of visibility and interaction. There are places where sculptures play the main role but interact with visitors… We decided to remove the glass walls as we realized that the interaction between the sculptures and visitors would be better without them. Naturally, one reaches the top of the building where the stoa to the Parthenon is situated, and where the metopes and other sculptures are hoped to be exhibited. From there is a view of the Parthenon. The New Acropolis Museum is not to be compared with any other museum. Most museums are designed to display their contents or to be impressive themselves. The New Acropolis Museum is the only museum designed for interaction. The Acropolis and the Parthenon are visible in an unexpected way. The museum is there to show what is both within and outside it. It is the first museum that plays such a role.

(1) Excerpt from a speech delivered at the Culture Ministry on July 11.