Studio Daniel Libeskind released a few images of their proposed design of the new Museo Regional de Tarapacá for the Regional Anthropological Museum of Iquique in northern Chile. The project is part of a larger development plan led by Mayor Mauricio Soria Macchiavello and his team.
Dubbed by the studio as “El Dragon de Tarapacá”, the new 3,760m2 building will replace the old museum built in 1892, which can currently display only 20 percent of their collection. Featuring the signature sharp, angular forms of a Libeskind building, the new museum's design was inspired by the Atapaca Desert's stark landscape and Iquique's urban dune, the “Cerro Dragon”. Exhibitions in the new building will display 6,000 years of northern Chilean history.
A sloped garden will lead up to the building's entrance hall, which will be topped by a cafe that overlooks the Southern coastline. Three pairs of parallel vertical walls shape the major spaces of the museum, and local materials like hardwood timber flooring and earth-colored concrete will be used. Exhibition spaces will extend along the length of the building on two floors, which will then terminate in a vertical space featuring a mirrored wall that reflects the surrounding natural landscape, Studio Libeskind describes. Educational spaces, classrooms, and an event theater will be located below the entrance hall.
“The design is informed by acoustical space. The idea was to treat each space as a distinct atmosphere and mood as you move throughout the museum. Every volume references the surrounding landscape—dune, mountain, desert, ocean,” Daniel Libeskind said in a statement. “The result is a silent musical composition in proportion, materiality, and light.”
Construction of the new Museo Regional de Tarapacá is currently scheduled to begin in early 2020.
2 Comments
Another fracking shard.
His Jewish Museum works because of its connection with and contrast against the older, baroque museum on the left, the only place of entry, what the connection and contrast imply about place and the specific history. And the building is infused with symbolic reference.
This project is supposed to be an an anthropological museum, yet it conjures nothing about the discipline or history or humanity. It is mere abstraction. I suppose it reflects the desert, but why? The sands of time? So what? The third picture above presents a sterile image, a stark arrow pointing to a city of glass boxes.
It's where we are now.
Still, it is more subdued than other efforts and not unpleasing.
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