Mexican practice Rojkind Arquitectos and Danish practice BIG has won a competition to design a new 3,500 sq m branch of the Tamayo Museum on the outskirts of Atizapan, Mexico.
The cross shaped building is set into a steep hillside and cantilevered out over the edge of the site to create shaded social areas underneath the exhibition space.
A permeable brick façade allows the building to use natural ventilation and filters out the sunlight.
It is named after Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo, whose private collection is housed at the existing Tamayo Contemporary Art Museum in Mexico City.
It is designed to look like an unfolded opened box and will provide art exhibition spaces alongside storage, packing and restoration facilities that will also be open to the public.
The cross shaped building is set into a steep hillside and cantilevered out over the edge of the site to create shaded social areas underneath the exhibition space.
Bjarke Ingels, project architect at BIG, said: “When you ask contemporary artists what kind of space they would prefer to exhibit their work in – they almost always describe old industrial warehouses or loft spaces.
On the other hand the museum director or the mayor might want an icon to attract visitors. So museum design is often caught in a dilemma between the artists' demand for functional simplicity and the museum’s (and architect’s) desire to create a landmark.
The cantilevering cross is the literal materialization of the cruciform functional diagram – devoid of any artistic interpretation. Museo Tamayo Extension Atizapan becomes the embodiment of pure function and pure symbol at the same time.”