The Santiago Museum of Visual Arts houses a valuable collection of contemporary painting and sculpture by Chilean artists. The Museum is located at the Mulato Gil square, an small urban corner of the Lastarria sector in the very heart of Santiago.
In this context, a compact, austere concrete box was erected, closing off the end of the little square. The small 1.350sqm. building is shaped like a parallelepipedon, owing to the lack of available space. Given the building’s close association with the existing neo-Colonial constructions, we proposed a meeting arising from contrast. Tradition and future are not approached as exluding dilemmas, on the contrary they offer a posibility of historic continuity and integration without losing sight of the fidelity we owe to contemporary circumstances of which we are part.
In view of the scant space avaible, we decided to restrict the museum’s hight so that it would not tower over the existing old house beside it. The wall of exposed concrete on the west side supports a mural painting by Roberto Matta.
The museum entrance crosses the arcade of the old house, which in this design becomes the atrium of the new building. The interior reveals itself as a surprising microcosm. The place extends vertically through half-stories facing each other and emphasizing the three-dimensional character of the layout. The luminous central void establishes a pause and connects the various levels of the exhibition halls with freestanding stairs. The facilities, offices, storerooms, and restoration workshop are located in an existing house adjacent to the new buildign but outside the square proper.
We have been particulary severe in restricting the array of items avaible to resolve the given problem. Emphasis was placed on the longitudinal section of the building and on the light filtering through strategically places interstices, so that the complexity will arise from those two dimensions.
