Galician Museum of Contemporary Art
Spain CCC ES
Álvaro Siza
1993
Type
Museum
Tags
cultural facilities, art spaces , dealing with borders, Spain ccc
Visitability
Allowed
Description
The centre is built in the grounds of an old convent. The project’s key aspects focus on the relationship with the garden, the old convent building and the other surrounding buildings. The objective was to resolve a problem created by a road that was opened in the 1970s, that had paid little heed to the sensitive nature of the historic context.Nonetheless the road had to be accepted. It was decided to locate the museum in front of the convent, alongside the street and to a certain extent substituting the wall that previously bordered the road, but with a slightly different implantation.The Galician Regional Council, who commissioned the work, initially intended the museum to be built inside the garden. This was for the usual concern that a new building would destroy the historic context. However, I insisted in locating the building next to the road, because I believe that a museum plays a key role in the life of a city and should not be reduced to an annex in a garden. The museum was designed on the basis of this relationship, with significant influence of the sloping garden that was originally decaying but was then restored. The itineraries within the museum, together with its lay-out, are intimately linked to the garden’s lay-out: there is an interior upward movement related to the garden’s sloping, upward movement; the angles are created in order to establish a transition between the geometry of the garden, the new road and the former context surrounding the museum. The themes addressed, from this starting point, were those typically associated to a museum: light and spatial organization.As in the case of my other museum projects, I opted for various welldefined spaces. The museum is not an open space but rather a succession of rooms, at different levels, that present different scales, different dimensions. There are rooms with high and low ceilings and larger and smaller rooms, thus enabling the museum to be adapted to any type of exhibition. It may also be added that, in addition to housing exhibitions, a museum currently functions as a meeting place and must be equipped with a series of spaces for public use, such as a café and shop, which play an important role in its financial life.(Álvaro Siza)