Monfí Museum. Cútar.

Málaga, Spain

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Monfí Museum. Cútar.

Málaga, Spain

Firm

Beatriz Pérez Doncel

Type

Cultural › Museum

STATUS

Built

YEAR

2015

SIZE

0 sqft - 1000 sqft

Cútar is an Arab heritage municipality in the heart of Axarquía region which origins relate to 10th century. Settled in the east face of a hill, its configured by the overlap of small one or two storey high white façade houses. This mainly residential typology, defined by their gable roofs, configure a net of narrow and sloped streets that remains almost unchanged.
At the end of the 15th century, after the conquer of Granada, some of the Muslim inhabitants of the city, “mudejares”, flee to the neighbour mountains to avoid repression. They received the name of “monfíes”. Cútar was one of the places they chose to hide in, at the foot of the village of Comares. In 2003, three manuscripts from that period where found inside the walls of one of its dwellings. Among them, a Coran left behind by those monfies during their scape and expulsion of the Christian kingdom.
The Monfí Museum is so a tribute of the Town hall of Cútar to those first inhabitants of the village.
The project has extended and adapted two facing houses sited in the street “Tintoreros”. They have been annexed by the addition of a covered pedestrian footbridge running above the aforementioned street. The bridge lays over the rooftop of one of the dwellings allowing the visitor to enjoy Cutar’s surrounding landscape of muscatel vineyards that produce the highly appreciated raisins of this municipality.
This construction raised over the urban fabric, aims to guide the visitor from the narrow and intimate Arab streets to the open landscape of vineyards and almond trees that runs until the feet of the Maroma mountain which peak frames the views of all this Axarquia region.
The footbridge skin consists in a weathering steel (Cor-ten) lattice in order to lighten the perception of this truss over the pre-existent urban fabric with the aim of avoiding the constrain of this space. Although its subtle perception, this imposing structure is conceived to configure the public urban space that conform the entrance to the Museum.