MUSAC, symbiosis of ARCHITECTURE and ART

8 September, 2011 No Comments

MUSAC is the Museum of Contemporary Art of Castilla and León (2005):

Mies Van der Rohe Prize for Contemporary Architecture (European Union 2007).

This museum located in the city of León is the work of two Spanish architects from Madrid, Emilio Tuñón and Luis Moreno Mansilla, awarded with the 2003 Spanish Architecture prize. After three years of development, they have designed this museum as a large surface for culture, with continuous spaces, but very well diversified. The museum consists of a series of linked but autonomous showrooms, able to display exhibitions of different sizes and characteristics at the same time. Each space opens to different rooms and patios in a way that achieve transversal and diagonal views.

It’s a wide building with irregular floors. The facade is composed of large panels of glass of 42 different colors that with changes of sunlight, make the building look as if it had a changing facade. The outside area, is projected as a concave space that also hosts events and activities.  The interior has a great surface of ​​continuous but different spaces that have plenty of rooms, skylights and patios, as an example of symbiosis between architecture and art.

The interior is built with white concrete walls, trying to be a comfortable space for art. The building’s original and current purpose was to make an exhibition of the art of the XXI century, whose collection consisted of 800 works created by national and international contemporary artists.

In addition to the prize mentioned above, the building has been recognized internationally in other occasions such as

* ON-SITE exposition: New Architecture in Spain, hosted by the MOMA in New York, noted as one of the most important architectural projects of Spain.

* Spanish representation in the Venice Architecture Biennale.

Other Posts