Having visited Gold Medal Park, I’d say it’s a nice addition to the Minneapolis cityscape. It offers a great view of the new and impressive Guthrie Theater, which I have not yet entered. The park isn’t a tour de force like Chicago’s Millennium Park, which I first visited a few months ago, but it’ll do.

The picture above was taken early in the morning, so it’s rather dark. Notice the impressive cantilevered deck on the right side of the theater.

I came across one critical appraisal of the park at a web site called Cafeapolis.

Viewing this part of Minneapolis, between Washington Avenue and the Mississippi River, I was struck by how much it has changed, with other recent additions being bike trails along the river, the Mill City Museum, and lots of condos. Formerly the area was undistinctive at best, and its transformation is a great success.

The architectural world is buzzing with news about several important and exciting building projects in Minneapolis, foremost among them the newly remodeled Walker Art Center. The refurbished museum of contemporary art opened on April 17 to much fanfare. Located on Hennepin Avenue near Interstate 94 and Loring Park, the new building was designed by the Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. I’ve seen its new aluminum-clad addition only from the interstate, but I look forward to taking a closer look.

Architectural critics have warmly received the new Walker. Larry Millett, retired Pioneer Press architectural critic, had high praise for the building. “Predictions are hazardous,” he writes in an April 10 column, “but the addition may well come to be seen as the first great 21st-century building in the Twin Cities, not just because of its novel appearance but also because it performs its public duties so well and with the kind of wit and spirit that renews your faith in the possibilities of architecture.”

In a New York Times article, Nicolai Ouroussoff describes the new museum as “an exhilarating place to view art” and admires its interior greatly, though he is somewhat critical of the new aluminum tower. He argues that the tower is less daring than it ought to have been, “a minor but unfortunate blemish on an otherwise enchanting design.” Like others, he notes that the tower’s reflective exterior makes it indistinct against the sky.

Star Tribune architectural critic Linda Mack has a similar take on the building in her review, noting that the architects wanted to cover the tower, or “cube” as she calls it, with “a stretched fabric skin.” Museum leaders balked at the cost for this innovative exterior, and the result, Mack says, is a crinkled aluminum exterior that is “frigid” and “grits the teeth.” She has better things to say about the interior, which is where the “genius” and “brilliance” of the new building are revealed. “Outside, it’s a conundrum,” she writes “Inside, it’s fun but not condescending, crisp but not cold, edgy but not cutting.”

Local author James Lileks, no slouch at architectural criticism himself, was less kind to the new Walker in his Star Tribune column: “Few buildings evoke a visceral, instantaneous sense of dread and horror like the new Walker. It’s not just a big brutal oversized lump of metal dropped amongst the churches and trees. It’s not just a collection of blank walls punctuated with random trapezoids.

“It’s a Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robot Head. And it’s ANGRY.”

In an earlier April 10 article, Mack went so far as to call the Walker the beginning of a “cultural rebirth” for Minneapolis. “It will be followed,” she writes, “by French architect Jean Nouvel’s monumental Guthrie Theater on the riverfront, Cesar Pelli’s wing-topped downtown library and Michael Graves’ more traditional additions to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Children’s Theatre.”

We have much to look forward to on the architectural front.