The [AC-CA]’s recent call for proposals for a new Contemporary Art Museum in the heart of Buenos Aires has been seductively synthesized by Houston architect Michael Arellanes II, principal and founder of M A 2 Architectural Design. The nature of the competition called for a building that reflects contemporary design tendencies, whilst simultaneously attending to the specific functions that are required of art museums and considering the impact upon the local milieu. Located within the Puerto Madero district, the museum will occupy a substantial plot of land along the riverbank of the Río de la Plata. While there are no plans for the Contemporary Art Museum to be built, the goal to generate progressive modern design ideas and dialogue surely succeeds with submissions of MA2’s caliber. More details and Arellanes’s description after the break.
In the current proposal for a Contemporary Museum of Art in Buenos Aires, the inception is based on synergetic plays of volumes and interlink-interlacing manifolds of tectonic forms and panels that create a dynamic fluxion of mass, surfaces and lines. The articulations involved relay on formal masses in an arrangement or in a cohesive group that perform more than the sum of its parts. The museum is multi-layered and composed of radiant volumes and pieces which converge in a poly-operational, structural, and sensuous array of tectonics. The effect of multi-generative forms grouped and working together as a performative whole is a diverse set of fluid and crystallized components strategically placed for an outcome of a dynamic structure, which valiancy plays a role in the visual and experiential impact of the viewer.
A museum is produced in which tectonics and space is operating in a field of “Fluxion Synergies”. These fields of cooperative interactions of fluid forms and synergized lines which also produce a series of desired patterns like that of the classical line work of the “Guilloche”, or creating “The Guilloche Effect”. By approaching the design of the museum with a generative and vector approach to space, volume, and form, the result is a building with intensity that affect the visual senses in an interesting and dynamic experience.
The external cladding is an array of curved and crystallized formal geometries by which they perform with an organizational behavior pattern of trajectories and intersecting surfaces. The geometries created are resulted from guilloche patterns that have been derived from parametric Cartesian equations. By utilizing basic parametric equations for comprehensive surface decor and structure, it has allowed for a series of patterns which can be transformed into an effective tool for varied panelization and lattice structures. Trigonometric equations that are best suitable for folding and curved forms are the “Hypotrochoid” formulas for they describe a family of curves to which the museum utilizes throughout its spaces. In addition to further investigate parametric formulas similar to the hypotrochoid; epitrochoid and hypocycloid are useful in this series of guilloche rosette formation.
In searching for the proper materials that best showcase the sleek surfaces and external cladding, varied sizes of polished and honed Glass Stone or White Neoparies, in balance with black hairline stainless steel for areas regarding framing and entry are used to give the desired effect. This gives the museum a dimension of weight, elegance, and purity in an exterior that is multifaceted and multidimensional. The interior spaces are an extension of the patterned exterior in areas of excessive height and openness. The Museum has five levels of exhibition space; in addition the entry and exit are separated by the outdoor plaza to create a flow spaces that circulate up and around to experience the entire museum.
