Alicante Contemporary Art Museum
This project emerges from two individual, singular points which propose a very well defined field of work from the outset:
On the one hand, this is a building for a previously established art collection from the 1950s- 1970s, including the collection donated to the city by Spanish artist Eduardo Sempere. This collection consists of works by modern artists: Calder, Vasarely, Chillida, Julio González and Sempere himself.
On the other hand, the location I the historic centre of Alicante, its slope parameters (10m), its language, its context and its orientation, all produce a unique atmosphere in the shadow of the Castle, the sea horizon and the proximity of the little Santa María Square and Church.
These two starting points - the relationship with a realm of artistic and perceptive references, and the relationship with the context of Alicante's historic centre - suggest a way of understanding and developing the project in its programmatic, spatial and perceptive solution.
The use of the stone, with its closely wall- related language, connects with the convent language of the adjacent church and the city's old quarter, while at the same time integrating Alicante's old "Asegurada Museum" building into a single volume, renovating and including the annexed spaces into the exhibition areas.
The stone volume, which absorbs the perimeter slope, is completed with a volumetrically defined vitreous piece, broken perceptively by a double transparent skin that cracks the volume with moiré reflections and games in a language that revives the 1950's and 60's kinetic art.
The interior exhibition space is bounded by continuous, diaphanous northern light, value-adding to three spatial /exhibition situations:
The first horizontal level, in continuity with a rhythm of vertical compressions and dilations;
The second level with its transversal rooms, which relate to the vertical dilations; Finally the top floor with its horizontal space, juxtaposed with syncopated vertical and horizontal spaces. This room stitches together the three courtyards - black, white and gold - with three perceptive situations related to the optical illusions used by the 1960's kinetic artists brought here into the outdoor space with changes of scale and references to the place.
