Mexican studio Taller Mauricio Rocha has expanded the Anahuacalli Museum in Mexico Metropolis, which was initially designed by artist Diego Rivera and architect Juan O’Gorman.
Resulting from a rise in its actions, the Anahuacalli Museum determined to develop its footprint into the adjoining park, including extra constructions to the unique buildings designed by Riveria and O’Gorman.
Taller Mauricio Rocha added three buildings that hover above the volcanic floor of San Ángel, a neighbourhood within the south of Mexico Metropolis, in addition to a courtyard and walkway that join the brand new constructions to the unique facility.
The entire constructions added by the studio are low-lying – related in top to the opposite museum buildings, apart from the castle-like essential construction that when held Rivera’s studio.
“Attaining the extension implied an open dialogue with the structure preexistent with a up to date interpretation and the nice problem of constructing within the ecological reserve, which is without doubt one of the few examples the place its ecosystem has not been altered,” stated the studio.
“The intervention manages to be a linker and never an aggressor.”
The unique design of the museum set the buildings round an open sq..
Taller Mauricio Rocha’s three buildings are on the west aspect of the property and embody a storage constructing, a workshop and workplaces.
With volcanic bases that cantilever the constructions above the bottom, every constructing opens up onto the brand new courtyard.
The warehouse – which doubles as a efficiency house – and the workshop are each sq. in form, whereas the workplace constructing is lengthy and extends away from the unique courtyard.
The bottom of the buildings is clad in volcanic stone, much like the unique constructions, however the inhabitable one-storey ranges are clad in darkish louvres that open the areas as much as the pure atmosphere, augmented by a sequence of gardens positioned across the constructions.
At sure factors, the voids beneath the cantilevered constructions create shaded semi-enclosed patios.
Two of the buildings characteristic voids that had been designed to open up this system. These voids had been additionally crammed with crops and function “open-air workshops”, in response to Taller Mauricio Rocha.
“The buildings are recessed of their base to attain much less influence with the panorama, the materiality of the brand new buildings with concrete and volcanic stone slabs of their base,” stated the studio.
The latticed partitions of the outside had been machine-cut and the flooring and ceilings are fabricated from concrete. Darkish-stained wooden strains a few of the inside corridors and was additionally used to make the doorways.
The supplies employed by Taller Mauricio Rocha proceed the darkish, volcanic palette of the unique constructions however have a extra open program than the densely packed stone of the originals.
As a part of the challenge, choose renovations to the present constructions had been additionally carried out by the studio.
The previous warehouse was transformed right into a upkeep space, the executive areas grew to become a cafeteria and a store, and the studio created museographies and different exhibition enhancements.
Rivera started work on the museum within the Fifties, designing and overseeing the development of the principle constructing earlier than his loss of life in 1957. After his loss of life, architect O’Gorman and Rivera’s daughter Ruth oversaw the development of the extra buildings.
Earlier than Taller Mauricio Rocha’s intervention, 1000’s of works of pre-Hispanic artwork that Rivera gathered throughout his lifetime had been saved away, however the brand new buildings permit many of those items to be seen by the general public.
“The Anahuacalli Museum is a spot that gives a big public house along with providing the final interval of Diego Rivera and the gathering of his pre-Hispanic items that he donated to the folks of Mexico,” stated the studio.
Different works that mix the previous and the brand new in Mexico embody Estudio MMX’s Progreso Museum of Geology, which makes use of Mayan constructing strategies and supplies in a contemporary context.
The pictures is by Rafael Gamo.
