Nelson Kon

OBJETIVO

On one side, we have the unit that holds support and administrative functions, the technical collection, a small auditorium, an engine room, and the vertical circulation systems. On the other side, we have the raised unit that holds the exhibits.
The units are connected by walkways that cut across the vertical gap of the streetway below. This welcoming site, enlarged in its center by the folding of the structural walls of concrete and protected by large glass panels in its periphery, displays the movement and life of the museum to all. On the ground level, the store and the coffee shop are a part of the main communal area – among visitors and passersby, between museum and city.
The Work and Workers Museum will deal with the history of labor in an ample and universal manner, from the prehistoric era to contemporary times, posing a permanent dialogue with other museums across the globe.

CONTEXTO

The Work and Workers Museum was conceived as part of a larger urban planning project for the new downtown area of São Bernardo do Campo. The center of the city displays a modern architectural complex, with large public spaces. The problem we found there was that its design became compromised with accelerated and unplanned development, resulting in a decline of its spatial quality as centrality. The new plan defines new urban references, with the creation of a central park that redefines the road systems of the area, clearing the ground level for pedestrian circulation. The park also stablishes a continuous green space that connects several public facilities. It is there that the Work and Workers Museum inserts itself, in a 10 thousand square meter terrain, originally occupied by the Municipal Market, right next to the City Hall.
The museum is set up along this park, amid a garden with trees, bushes, and vines entangled with big machines and unused industrial artifacts – objects that relate to the origins and experience of labor along history, especially tied to industrialization. The garden will stage a definite confrontation between human and natural, with the vegetation surrounding and enveloping the machinery.
This public garden of labor enters the raised body of the museum to reveal its great central welcoming area. This is an area/streetway that gives access to the building, crosses it lengthwise, and organizes the terrain and the edifice, inserting them into the very fabric of the city.