Francisco MANGADO
 
fM
FRANCISCO MANGADO

Bioma Museum University of Navarra+

2021-

Pamplona-Spain

20.200 m2


The BIOMA project is essentially a synthesis project.

Programmatic synthesis. It combines research, teaching and exhibition. Spaces of different scales and functions that, although related in that all three make up the BIOMA institution, are different in essential matters such as the degree of their public dimension.

Citizen synthesis. The University of Navarra is based and configured on very different urban structures. On the one hand, in the “lower part”, it is configured as the most attractive park in the city. Its isolated buildings are nothing more than points, elements scattered and at the same time united by this great green fabric, natural and adapted to the topography, which is in itself one of the most interesting public spaces in Pamplona. On the other hand, the upper part, more urban and densified, where the educational centers belong to a plot configured according to traffic roads and urban continuities. The new BIOMA building, located between both parts of the Campus, has to assume its belonging to both, configuring itself as a synthesis of these two dimensions and urban structure and turning them into a single and specific one.

Landscape synthesis that is reflected in the fact that the building is a meeting place between an elevated plane, a sort of horizontal platform, and an abrupt topography that descends towards the south, towards the campus park. A building that, from below, will be seen as a “lighthouse”, a reference with symbolic overtones while, seen from above, it will be the “viewpoint” that projects its magic towards the lower campus.

But it is in the synthesis of such different and even contradictory situations, in the general tensions for a complex reality, welcoming complexity, where a project capable of becoming something attractive and suggestive becomes possible. BIOMA tries to reach a compromise, by no means impossible, between the most artificial order and the most organic disorder; between the most mineral materiality and light as an abstract fact; between being a viewpoint or a lighthouse; between seeking maximum efficiency but also those values that symbolize and are capable of expressing the will of a University that wants to reaffirm itself with the pride of things well done; between the built and the natural. I have said on several occasions that this is for me the most difficult project I have ever faced, and I believe it is also the most attractive. This difficulty exists thanks to the contradiction, which being a problem becomes, at the same time, a fruitful crucible in which to make architecture. BIOMA aspires to be a great synthesis from a continuous and beautiful contradiction.

Fine Arts Museum of Asturias
2006
/
2015
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
2000
/
2009
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
1986
/
1987
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
2006
/
2014
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.