The Art Mill Museum - Francisco Mangado. Arquitecto

Francisco MANGADO

fM

FRANCISCO MANGADO

The Art Mill Museum+

2015-

Doha-Qatar

70.000 m2

We are in a fantastic location, between the sea and the land, occupying a fragment of the port of Doha that served as a place of exchange and communication between different people and countries.

We strongly believe that today a museum should be exactly this, a place of cultural exchange, of exchange of experiences, where the encounter becomes the main engine of the museum’s life. Encounter not only of people belonging to different cultures, but of people belonging to different times. To create a place to dream, a cultural epicenter in which to develop a torrent of activity for the city of Doha. This is the goal.

At the same time, the proposal is committed to freeing up the entire seafront and creating vast green parks, accentuating the strong relationship of the site with the sea.

We do not think of the project for the Art Mill Museum and the surrounding park independently, but rather as one and the same project. That is why the Art Mill Museum is conceived as a piece that rises above the level of the plot, to highlight and enhance the continuity of the park and the public space that penetrates the building and becomes a fundamental part of it, overlooking the exhibition areas through the large courtyards that ventilate, illuminate and cool the large shaded space created on the first floor.

The project is conceived as an important roof that protects a fresh and well ventilated square where the meeting and relationship spaces, workshops, stores… everything of a more open character and that does not imply a visit to the interior of the museum are located. A square open to the sea recalling those docks that once represented the contact with what was “beyond”. From this space, access is gained to the large roof which, structured according to a grid that recalls the urban organization of the old city of Doha, contains all the exhibitions and meeting places looking, in the distance, at the new city and the horizon. The old mills, the most attractive and best preserved, remain incorporated into the museum’s use as special exhibition spaces.

Fine Arts Museum of Asturias

This proposal started off with deliberations on the project at large, including the future of the Velarde and Oviedo-Portal mansions. It could not be any other way. Only through consideration of the larger scheme of things can there be any guarantee of an optimal operational future for an institution as important as this one. We also understand that the proposed new layout makes it possible to organize construction work in phases, and in such a way that museum operations are at no time interrupted.The objectives/guidelines of the architectural action are:-An image and identity that, over and above the historic- architectural substratum of the site, will give the Fine Arts Museum of Asturias its own uniqueness as an institution.-Respect for that historical substratum.-Diaphanous spaces that facilitate exhibition montage and make it possible to contemplate artworks with sufficient perspective, unlike how things are at present.-Clear-cut internal functioning.-Clear-cut accesses.-A substantial increase in exhibition floor area.

Archaeology Museum of Álava

The basic form of the building is determined by its context and the continuity, both in terms of concept and program, which it establishes with the adjoining Palace of Bendaña, currently the Naipes Fournier Museum.In the permanent exhibition halls, all horizontal surfaces, floors and ceilings, are very dark. The wood floor (almost black) and the continuous ceiling (also black) form a closed and dark ‘box’ or chest delimited by the facade walls clad externally in a folded skin of bronze sheet, with pieces that are superposed or stepped depending on the lighting needs.   But these dark spaces are traversed by white glazed prisms – round which the exhibition of pieces is organized – that shall draw light in from the roof at daytime, coming from an internal illumination in the darkness. These prisms shall be inlaid with graphics and information to describe the items, but beyond this pedagogical task, their light will speak of the adventure of interpretation, the metaphor that makes reference to light in a dark space, to the hope of being able to interpret aspects from our past.Towards the interior of the plot, the access courtyard is configured by more transparent boundaries: it is the bronzed skin that opens up with constant rhythm allowing space to signal visitors into the exhibition areas.

Underground Museum and Plaza Carlos III in Olite

The location is the medieval town of Olite, court of the monarchs of Navarre, specifically the vicinity of their palace, which was restored at the start of the century. Some old galleries of great historic value were recently discovered in the subsoil.The architectural solution had to address three fundamental problems or objectives. First, to design an urban space traditionally considered a square, but which was really a geometrically irregular, elongated complex, a remnant of different phases of the city’s growth. Second, to give access to important galleries that had been buried for centuries. Finally, to resolve the encounter between the new development and the palace, the encounter with the walls and stones born from the same street.The project tries to create a ‘carpet’, a continuum – basically defined by the kind of stone used, with the color and texture making it possible to distinguish new structures from preexisting ones – over which to provide the answers to the various problems mentioned. These answers give rise to the most characteristic elements of the architectural solution. Among these elements we will mention the oval in front of the City Hall building, as well as the two accesses to underground galleries and, finally, the grand staircases that designed as prolongations of the raised platform.

Fine Arts Museum of Asturias

This proposal started off with deliberations on the project at large, including the future of the Velarde and Oviedo-Portal mansions. It could not be any other way. Only through consideration of the larger scheme of things can there be any guarantee of an optimal operational future for an institution as important as this one. We also understand that the proposed new layout makes it possible to organize construction work in phases, and in such a way that museum operations are at no time interrupted.The objectives/guidelines of the architectural action are:-An image and identity that, over and above the historic- architectural substratum of the site, will give the Fine Arts Museum of Asturias its own uniqueness as an institution.-Respect for that historical substratum.-Diaphanous spaces that facilitate exhibition montage and make it possible to contemplate artworks with sufficient perspective, unlike how things are at present.-Clear-cut internal functioning.-Clear-cut accesses.-A substantial increase in exhibition floor area.