MALI'S NEW CONTEMPORARY ART WING
Burgos & Garrido Arquitectos, together with LLAMA Urban Design, won in 2016 the international competition for the MALI's New Contemporary Art Wing, which includes the design of a new plaza and the extension building of the museum.
The proposal, which is expected to be built by 2021, reestablishes the relation between the museum and the 'Parque de la Exposición', the city and its inhabitants.
The morphology of the elements that configure the proposal is bold and explicit: three pieces are revealed above ground - the entrance pavilion to the gallery, the entrance pavilion to the library and classrooms and the patio - and three are buried - classrooms, exhibition gallery and interior garden -. Each of the elements above ground has a direct link to one of the elements underground. One as a pondering image of the other. The pavilion at Paseo Colon reflects on the exhibition gallery; the library pavilion on the classrooms; and the jacaranda patio on the interior garden. This disposition of the elements evokes the paradigmatic image of the pavilion offered to us by the Romanticism, or the circular temple over the grotto. The classical element, with its severe order, and the organic construction with its sensitive order.
The project possesses two elements that act as filters mediating between the exterior and interior experiences, but also between the distinctive classical and organic dimensions of the proposal. One of the filters mediates between the paced rhythm of the underground structure and the exuberance of the interior garden and it arises acquiring the form of a huge glass cloth that illuminates both the gallery and the classrooms. The second filter is the long clerestory, a contemporary version of the teatinas from Lima, which links the jacarandas patio with the interior garden, capturing the light and leading it into the depths of the new wing of the MALI.
The Gallery
In the deepest layer of the geology generated by the new MALI, a great room is conceived, transparent and flexible, which presents the order of modernity and classicism with the intention of building a space capable of hosting multiple visions of the reality of current contemporary art. It will be a space illuminated by a beam of light that appears on the surface, a crack covered with vegetation that creates an exotic and specific space contrasting with the mute, dry and universal space of the exhibition gallery.
The Jacaranda´s patio
We propose an open outdoor space next to the existing building of the MALI, an inherent space that resolves the enclosure of the Parque de la Exposición and builds a specific atmosphere created by a forest of jacaranda trees. This patio that evokes the tradition of the courtyards of Lima, is the foyer space into the park and the MALI, it establishes the circulation routes of the visitors leading them to the differentiated entrances into the diverse spaces present in the new building. The pavilions hosting these foyers obtain light and views from the same place, the patio –courtyard -, giving them meaning and adding value to the new intervention.
A dense urban forest
We believe that the restoration of the magnificent green roof that once existed over the Parque de la Exposición is indispensable, reestablishing the atmosphere of a great shaded space, a great green mass articulated by promenades, activities and by the elegant presence of a collection of pavilions, four historical and four contemporary, lending themselves as small delicate chests scattered over the interior of the forest. This new atmosphere is only possible if the excessive accumulation of architecture, sometimes mediocre, that invades and deteriorates the park, is reduced.
