Serlachius Art Museum Gösta Proposal by MACA

By Bustler Editors|

Monday, Jun 27, 2011

Visualization of the proposed Serlachius Art Museum Gösta extension by MACA (Image: MACA)

Young, Madrid-based architecture office MACA has shared with us their entry to the international design contest for the extension to the Serlachius Art Museum Gösta in Mänttä, Finland.

Project Description from the Architects:

The proposal plans to solve all the functional requirements of a museum, making the most of the circulations, the sustainability and integration of the building in its environment and at the same time creating a recognizable icon, a representative building worthy of the importance of the museum, The formal and constructive references will come from the environment, native materials, the landscape and the scale of the existing buildings.

The chosen site respects practically all the existing woodland, minimizing the number of trees to be eliminated within the possibilities that allow the construction of a building on this scale and functional complexity.

Visualization, exterior at night (Image: MACA)

We will join together the principal spaces, “compacting” the building and maintaining the fragmented scale which we are looking for and improving the routes. The use of the same formal and volumetric language in all the pieces together results in that the intervention is carried out in a uniform way, without having buildings with different characteristics for each use. We think that it isn’t only the exhibition space which is important, there are also other protagonists which we intend to value and to treat them in a fair and uniform way.

This distribution of programatic “strips” which slide among each other also make up the exterior spaces, creating two spaces or “squares” towards the entrance road: one for loading and unloading the works of art for the expositions, with large doors towards the exposition rooms and storerooms and another next to the existing building . Exterior spaces will be created towards the lake, for example the restaurant terrace.

In spite of the variety of programmes we have decided on an uniform intervention which allows us to build a single, recognizable building. The same architectural quality will be given to the programmes for public use for visitors as to the spaces for the workers adapting heights, proportions and the uses which each programme requires.