In collaboration with Beth Hughes
In our era of new technologies and multimedia the role of the contemporary museum must move beyond the isotropic condition of hermetic and autonomous spaces. The new museum must adopt a far more heterogeneous and polyvalent character to absorb the new roles it has acquired.
The museum program is clearly distributed around the central atrium – the chamber: a performance space centred under a full height void that opens the building up to the sky. The sidewalls of all the surrounding spaces are operable and flexible so that they can open up to the centre – this ever changing quality serves as a sort of performance of its own, bringing theatre and animation to the building.
The central chamber acts like a diaphragm for the building, expanding and contracting for its varying needs. The floor of the performance space is divided into three moving platforms that can slide up and down the interior of the void to create different configurations, acoustics and engagements with the rest of the building and allowing it to operate differently depending on environmental demands.
program: museum architecture: João Fagulha, João Ruivo, Raquel Oliveira, Beth Hughes sustainability consultants: i+i consulting – Isabel Silvestre, Ignacio Medina 3D images: Panoptikon client: The Museum of Fine Arts Budapest and The Városliget Zrt area: 8.100 m2 year: 2014 location: Budapest, Hungary status: competition