Centro Cultural San Carlos - Studio Roca + ROW Studio

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Centro Cultural San Carlos - Studio Roca + ROW Studio

Firm

Studio Roca
ROW Studio

Type

Cultural › Gallery Cultural Center Museum

SIZE

25,000 sqft - 100,000 sqft

BUDGET

$100K - 500K

The Academy
of San Carlos was founded in 1781 in Mexico City, becoming the first formal
education arts school in the American continent. Since 1791 it occupies its
current site and on the same date the Galleries of the Academy of San Carlos,
the first museum in America, where created. Its collections include artworks by
artists such as Rubens, Dürer, Rembrandt and an almost unique series bye
Giovanni Battista Piranesi. The building houses too the first arts library in
the continent, keeping volumes that span from the XV century to today.
After a
closure period of about 30 years in which the galleries where carefully
restored the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) decided to reopen
the galleries under the name of San Carlos Cultural Center, inviting several
firms to participate in a competition to propose the design of the basic
infrastructure needed to operate as a contemporary museum within the original galleries.
Due to the importance of the site and the process of restoration involved, the
competition limited the intervention to self supporting structure that would
not alter in any permanent way the existing elements, including walls, floors
and ceilings.
The brief
included a ticket booth and a checkroom in the access and a book store and shop
in the exit. A multipurpose space, honor wall and offices in the second hall
and a production and exhibition area for electronic and multimedia artworks in
a third separate hall.


Studio Roca and ROW // Studio Proposal

  Departing from
the use of neutral colors and reflective materials we sought to give the spotlight
to the original architecture of the galleries.
Aluminum
mirrored surfaces where proposed to reflect the features of the halls, thus
making the intervention pieces almost invisible. The use of tilted planes
allows the visitor to see the different details of the ceiling, walls and
floors without seeing their own reflection. In this manner the historical
aesthetic of the place trough its own reflection becomes the main decorative
feature of the proposal.
When accessing
on the first gallery the visitor is received by the resting area which conducts
the traffic to the reception. The checkroom is integrated to a series of faces
that hide its content from the rest of the visitors. This faces continue
folding along the wall to become the supporting structure for a 40” screen that
shows information about the exhibitions.
The book
shop and museum store is located on the other side of the room. Here the
tilting planes are segmented to create shelves that can be used to display books
and objects. They are complemented by Droog’s elastic straps that transform the
vertical surfaces into display areas that facilitate the interaction of the
public with the objects on sale. Movable columns
mounted on wheels are used to delimitate the multipurpose space and provide additional
lighting trough the fixtures integrated on top of them. The interior of the columns can be used as
storage for chairs, speakers, screens and other temporary equipments. The columns
can be used to create virtual or physical divisions in the space to accommodate
the different activities planned on it. The honor walls are integrated to the
wall partitions that separate the public area from the offices of the cultural
center.
The
multimedia space is located on a third hall know as the Blue Room. The exhibitions
are located on one end of the room with the help of a temporary structure that
allow the pass of cables and the fixture of equipment and artworks. The production
area is located on the opposite side of the room. Here the artists can be seen
working on electronic media artworks. This area is installed on top of a
platform and divided with glass allowing the free interaction with the visitors
but protecting at the same time the computer equipment.

Product Spec Sheet

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Team

alvaro hernandez felix

Alfonso Maldonado Ochoa

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Centro Cultural San Carlos - Studio Roca + ROW Studio

Centro Cultural San Carlos - Studio Roca + ROW Studio

Product Spec Sheet

Collaborating Firms

Team