Soumaya Museum / LAR + Fernando Romero

Sep 2009

By Karen Cilento — Filed under: Architecture News ,Museums and Libraries , LAR + Fernando Romero, Mexico City, Soumaya Museum

▼

Add this to My Bookmarks:

share by email

share by email

Designed by LAR + Fernando Romero, the Soumaya Museum, slated for completion in 2010, will house a diverse collection of international painting, sculpture, and object art from the 14th century to the present, including the world’s second largest collection of Rodin sculptures. Conceived as a sculpture, the museum’s amorphous form will be a contemporary icon for Mexico City that is also a functional curatorial space.

More about the museum, including images and videos, after the break.

Its “avant garde form” is a drastic break from art museums that typically become standard volumetric boxes. The distinct form will allow every user to perceive it in a different way upon entering the museum. The façade is made from translucent concrete that filters light, making the spaces feel light and open, without sacrificing the material’s structural integrity. Once inside, the “intermediate levels are open to each other in a continuous volume, but partially separated by enclosed areas, making all spaces unique in their shape and form.”

Constructed with steel columns of varying diameters, the structure provides a non-linear circulation route taking viewers past the nearly 20,000 square meters of exhibition space.

The museum will also include an auditorium, library, offices, a restaurant, and gathering lounge as well as four underground levels of parking below two underground levels of storage and restoration labs.

Current Construction State

All images courtesy of LAR.

To see more images.

Type: Art Museum
Location: Mexico City, Mexico
Exhibition space: 20,000 sqm (215,000 sf)
Exhibition floors: 5
Scheduled to open: end of 2010

Cite:
Cilento , Karen . "Soumaya Museum / LAR + Fernando Romero" 02 Sep 2009. ArchDaily. Accessed 09 Feb 2012. <http://www.archdaily.com/33925>

Comments (39)
Tweets (7)
Links to this entry (11)

4life says:

I don’t know, I think I am confused…

# September 2, 2009 at 20:34

héctor coss says:

Why?

# September 2, 2009 at 21:17

as says:

why wouldnt you hector, this is worse than utter confusion…

# August 15, 2010 at 05:19

SPC says:

If someone has the book ‘Move’ [1999] by UN Studio please check the volume ‘Techniques’ page 210.
Strong resemblence.
Greetings.

# September 2, 2009 at 21:27

The roof skin reminds me of the one I worked while being PL in LAR: HCoSShttp://hectorcoss.blogspot…. which is published in the TRANSLATION LAR/FERNANDO ROMERO Book by ACTAR

# September 2, 2009 at 22:08

André Moraes says:

more simple to understand when you imagine a common building with ordenated floors, but with uncommon circulations .. then you turn the axis a litle to give some distortion and tcharam! I think that is a really creative project, LAR + Fernando Homero have a lot of really nice projects.. congrats!

# September 2, 2009 at 22:00

jp says:

WOW amazing in every sense. I’ll have to borrow some of those clever graphics/diagram ideas

# September 2, 2009 at 22:30

james says:

nuclear power plant cooling tower

# September 2, 2009 at 23:59

biboarchitect says:

I thought so for a while before start reading

# September 3, 2009 at 01:22

One says:

Looks Great. Building it? Even better.

# September 3, 2009 at 04:26

panza says:

I like it – the iconical shape fits on that place

# September 3, 2009 at 06:33

Raf says:

I think the grass base is ridiculous…

# September 3, 2009 at 08:13

guy says:

beautiful. very well done.

I think too often museums that are more sculptural, while interesting and enjoyable to walk through, tend to loose usable interior gallery space. Like the Hamilton Building at the Denver Art Museum. It’s an amazing building, but if you are going for the art, you come away wishing there was more in a building that size. And the space is there, it’s just unusable. This looks very well planned out while still keeping an artistic and engaging sculptural form and interior space.

# September 3, 2009 at 08:51

Squidly says:

No mention of context. Another “cool” shape with no relation to its site, just someone’s screen dream with seductive graphics to win over the image hungry crowd. Why no site info?

# September 3, 2009 at 12:52

I live in México City. The context around the site is diverse, from late 30s and 50s modern residential typologies to high end corporate buildings. The best way to dialogue with this context is by applying a disasociation of orthogonality via an informal structure which enhances (by contrast) the quality of the neighborhood and inmediate landscape. The form seems to be practically animated by the surrounding information: highways, bridges, streets, houses, buildings, cars, trains, people… a beautiful chaos… México City.

# September 3, 2009 at 14:31

hector! HA! Do you have any clue of what you are talking about are you a 2nd year student enamoured with words you just learned and forms that are “cool”.
Hector that structure and complex annihilated a community, a typology of living only found im mexico city, it annihilated lives! and for what? for a fashionable complex that is mediocre to ok- and that is only if you judge the form, which is a amateurish way of critiquing architecture, architecture is not about form.
A form that displaced lives, and replaced it with a gentrified monstrosity, a wall of discrimination…
Hector this is Mexico at its worse, sadly Mexico as usual…
This is a national disgrace!

# August 15, 2010 at 05:38

ygogolak says:

Look at the construction photo. You can see it’s next to a busy road, maybe a highway. Should have looked like a parking garage, right?

# September 3, 2009 at 14:48

Well… some people (architects) think that working with context means being literal, mimic or sterile. In terms of typology, what have really stood out in this city are organic forms like Felix Candela’s, Ramirez Vazquez, Ernesto Gómez Gallardo, Javier Senosiain, Marco Aldaco, etc.

# September 3, 2009 at 14:57

patentpolice says:

Beautiful form, no question. I’ll be curious to see this as a built work.

I’m a bit confused as to why only animations with the steel structure and not the skin? The animations suggest a spatial experience, and a relationship with the sky and horizon. However this project says the skin is translucent concrete, and it seems the experience of the gallery spaces will be quite different than the animations.

I hope there is a cool void in the middle of this, not just the ground floor lobby. If not I would think it’s a bit of a lost opportunity.

# September 3, 2009 at 13:55

plots says:

I’m not entirely certain I’m in love with this building, it’s nice enough looking I guess but it seems to really just be two free form lofted curves. Looks like they developed the structure by just running vertical contours and triangulating between each member.

I’d be more interested to see some kind of diagram explaining the development of the floor plates along with a more clear circulation diagram. I think the circulation concept is interesting but it doesn’t read, to me at least, in these drawings. It could be a great project but as it is it is difficult to tell, the diagrams are too unclear and aren’t really telling me anything I can’t tell just by looking at the thing.

# September 3, 2009 at 15:12

Yes, perhaps it looks like a simple series of Rhino commands, still I do not think that architecture should be complex a priori, algorithmic operations or simple additions and substractions are valid in the same degree as a building parting from a croissant sketch.

# September 3, 2009 at 15:36

i wholly agree and, to qualify my earlier statement, I’m not necessarily opposed to the project formally I’m more interested in what drove the specific choice of geometry. I’m not advocating for self rationalizing math architecture by any means but I’m also not advocating for simply using the embedded tools in Rhino, or any other 3d modeler, to draw a similarly sexy, and in my opinion an equally meaningless, formal object. The circulation concept and floor plates seem to hint at more depth to the design but I can’t really tell what those hints are leading to based on the diagrams included.

I know that hot air rises just as I know how to cross brace structural ribbing, what I don’t know is why this building is the way that it is. I would be interested to see a generative concept rather than the same old diagrams that seem to be associated with every project these days.

# September 3, 2009 at 20:20

Hector you are clueless. Please tell me you don’t practice architecture in Mexico…

# August 15, 2010 at 05:40

StructureHub Blog says:

Derivation of a nuclear reactor notwithstanding, I think the form is both unique and iconic. And assuming the exterior is permeable, it should supply an attractive mix of silhouettes of varying depth and color throughout the day and into the night.

# September 3, 2009 at 15:59

steve says:

can you say nuclear power plant exhaust?

# September 3, 2009 at 16:26

alejandro says:

Please… give more details of “The façade made out of translucent concrete” we want to know how it´s fixed to the main structure and how it looks from the inside out. Thanks

# September 3, 2009 at 16:58

georg says: