Rafael Gamo, Jaime Navarro

OBJETIVO

The space includes two galleries for temporary exhibitions, multi-use spaces, a library, workshops and a cafeteria distributed in a lush, 40,000-square-foot garden. The footprint of the pre-existing built structures has been used to respect the flora that includes amate, ceiba, cazahuate and guaje trees, at the same time honoring the apantle (aqueduct) flowing from a natural spring and crossing the property. The route defines the garden’s resulting abstraction by creating hierarchies for the paths, with layers of different sizes and materials. A series of pools help to freshen the tropical climate through their placement —as a roof of the exhibition cube— for passive heat regulation, and therefore include aquatic plants and fish from the same botanical convention.
 
The architecture heads in the same direction, as a work of public, tactile, transformable sculpture that can be appropriated. An open-doored space using exposed white concrete containers creates fabrics for bringing art and culture into contact with the city. Soriano’s sculptures act as spectators and lookouts, broadening the perspectives of the artwork and its exhibition narratives.

In code, with subtle hints and nods to the artist himself, the museum opens up niches, reveals textures, draws paths and marks boundaries, leaving open the possibility for any kind of cultural commotion. The interpretation and attachment to the site reveals the deciphered sensibility for architecture and its infiltrated surroundings. The museum as pretext and pathway to exalt the garden’s geometry; public sculpture as an initial state and reconciliation of form.

CONTEXTO

Juan Soriano’s painting and sculptural work rooted itself in the public sphere through monumental sculptures. His forum —arranged to stimulate conversation— also hints at an obsession for doors and windows. His preponderance lies in the dissolving borders between public and private space, exposed areas and contents.
The everyday and aesthetic ideas behind his sculptures is implicit in the urban contribution that he made in public and private works of architecture.
 
These ideas formed the contours and foundations of the Juan Soriano Cultural Center and Museum (MMAC), an approach taken in two synchronized moments: public sculpture and collective space. The design shapes the syllogism of a garden in the museum, or a museum in a garden. Where does the museum end and the city begin? The cultural complex becomes a shortcut towards equality through the landscape, architecture and art. A sculptural garden, intertwined with concrete volumes, leafy trees and artistic provocations.
 
The architecture nods at the public aspect of the project and the artist’s wide-ranging vision. This is a museum that combines urban design and local connection. It makes landscape and threshold possible: the former connects two points to create a circuit by extrapolating the streets of Cuernavaca’s downtown streets toward the Amatitlán neighborhood in a diagonal that removes the usual museum walls; while the latter appears to be a narrative of a cultural center that encourages differences by using diagonals, frames, pathways, courtyards, passages, staircases, sculptures, reflecting pools and green spaces.