Acumulação Museum, Final Proposal
In reviewing my original proposal for the museum, I was not completely happy with a number of aspects. While I liked the idea of people being drawn up to experience the cafe and roof deck on the top level, realistically, I realized, the cafe would have to be on the ground floor to draw in as much pedestrian traffic as possible. In the original proposal, almost the entire ground floor seemed closed off to the public, even though there was a nice courtyard to the west of it, and this is an issue that I addressed in this version. Not only did I move the cafe to the ground floor, but I also opened up almost the entire ground floor to the pedestrian street and adjoining courtyard. This felt more inviting to me and created a transition space at ground level. I also reorganized the entire program of the museum. Initially, all of the employee offices were tucked away in the basement. Instead, another “building” was added within the space to serve the needs of the museums administrators. This not only breaks up the plan on each level allowing for two distinct exhibition spaces, but plays with the notion of servant and served. The museums everyday operations become transparent, available for anyone to see.
To tie the collection together, I found common themes in the seperate items to be exhibited (Moghul miniature paintings, pre-Colombian textiles, and Mimbres pottery) and used them as a guide for the architecture. I used three broad themes, death, life, and afterlife, into which practically all the pieces of the exhibit would fit. Since there were three levels above grade, each level would deal with one subject. Because the original version relied too much on artificial light, I opened up the museum to more diffused natural light by creating louvers on the outside of exhibition areas. To set the atmosphere for each of the aforementioned themes, the louvers start completely closed on the lower level (death) and gradually open as they make their way to the uppermost level (afterlife). As a result, the lower level, death, is a bit more dark than the middle level, life, which is in turn a bit more dark than the uppermost level, the afterlife.
This is just a brief description of some of the points, for a longer-winded version, as well as circulation and lighting diagrams, click here.
