Stages 0 to 2

Collaboration with Camilo Rebelo Studio

2015

The programs for a Photography Museum - Musée de l'Elysée - and a Design and Contemporary Arts Museum – Mudac –, the Lausanne Museum Pole, were presented by an international competition in Switzerland. By invitation, some prestigious architectural ateliers from all around the world participated, as Kazuyo Sejima, Jean Nouvel and Shigeru Ban, architecture Pritzker Prizes. I was gratified to take part of it, team working together with a Swiss studio on designing our project solution. Sir David Alan Chipperfield was vice president of the jury. The victorious project, “One museum, two museums”, was designed by the Portuguese brothers Manuel and Francisco Aires Mateus.

I personally participated in developing parts of the concept by building the model and resizing, adjusting or redesigning its proportions in whatever the model itself asked for. Due to all the competition documentation requirements plus the close deadlines, this definitely challenged my competence. In fact, the site conditioning and programs were interesting: an urban space close to the Lausanne main train station with industrial characteristics, urban segregation and a proximity with the historical centre. The project presented tries to answer the problematics and solicitations of the site and program by a particular project composition and language. The formulated proposal consists of a volume that follows the accentuated topography through a volume that extends itself to all the competition regulation stipulated limits. This volume is a regular mass that establishes a connection between the different levels of the site, by doing a gradual transition amid the diverse spaces and quotas.

Its garden rooftops public spaces are contemplation spot and its interior program spaces occupied mainly by exhibition halls are presented and combined with exterior patios and terraces. The volume is physically connected with various places and accesses of the urban mesh from downtown to the site, connecting them between themselves and as well the museum to the restant places in the city. There is a a highlighted volume that stands out from the main structure as an exceptional element, a cube, establishing once again an urban relationship amid the topographic mass and one of the pre- existent buildings of the site. This last, a parallelepiped cultural building designed by Barozzi Veiga architects, the Lausanne Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts, 2011-2016, introduces some rigidity and brutalism to the place.