Assuming that we still regard the museum as a place for both art and the public, a place which still provides scope for the imagination, what is the meaning, what is the aim and what is the point of the real or imaginary space? These are some of the issues addressed by Chris Dercon, Director of the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam. The fact that museums are open to the public, Dercon argues, has played a part in turning the museum into a virtual space and a machine for representation, in which the space itself is often experienced rather than history. Moreover, entirely new developments - the rise of hypermedia, the boom in photography, the quasi-exclusion of contemporary art from collections - must be taken into account. Do such new developments have consequences for the architecture of museums?