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Architects: Vásquez Del Mercado Arquitectos
- Area: 87726 ft²
- Year: 2010
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Photographs:Luis Gordoa
Text description provided by the architects. The site, the flow of people, access controls, the urban commitment implied in the site of the future museum and a playful notion of "balance of form and color" for a building that will be used primarily by children are some of the concepts that foreshadow the architectural solution of the Museum. The general expectation is for the building to be coherent with the recreational and educational vision to which the name refers, in this case the game of the "airplane" (hopscotch) known in the north of the country as "bebeleche". Avoiding the trap implicit in the invitation, instead of being literal, we decided to interpret the game in both its linearity and dynamism, introducing the idea that the architecture can even rely on graphic design to justify color and material proposals, for example.
The museum is composed of a series of chromatic volumes "boxes", responding to the thematic palette of the museographic script and by a taller building that contains the main lobby and is covered by the sum of the colors of these volumes. This "polychromatic" volume with kinetic ambitions is integrated in turn by a double height circulation that contains inner gardens and envelops the pavilions. The circulation galleries as well as the museum's support areas are presented in monolithic and monochromatic volumes. The arrangement of the volumes allow for various alternatives of visiting the museum, transversely and longitudinally, with the possibility of a pause in between each room. Also, the linear arrangement of the galleries, rewards the end of the route with the plaza-garden playground, where visitors come together to play as part of an integrating and knowledge generating activity. This space offers a view of the architectural complex within the forest.
The building is made of white concrete with aggregates from the region that provide it with its own color, double T roof slabs and cement block walls covered in glass in the case of the thematic boxes, thus ensuring a low maintenance cost for the museum with an architecture also aspires to be timeless.