The Museum That Forgot Its Street

Seen from the harbour, the new museum is irresistible: a pale cliff of stone folding toward the water, photographing beautifully at every hour. Seen from the street behind it, it is a service door and a blank wall.

This is the recurring failure of the landmark building — that it performs for the photograph and forgets the pedestrian. A museum owes something to the person arriving on foot from the bus stop, not only to the helicopter and the postcard.

The back of the house

Great civic architecture has no back. The Pantheon does not have a bad side. When a building turns its most generous face to the view and its meanest to the neighbourhood, it has quietly decided who matters.

The interiors, it must be said, are sublime. One only wishes the architects had spent a little of that brilliance on the walk in.