ART TEXT

MUSEUM OF MODERN ART (1991) Architect: Enrique Browne Assistants: Isabel Perelló Client : Corporación Museo de Arte Moderno de Santiago Construction Location: Vitacura, Santiago de Chile Area: 5000 m 2 Plot Area: 7080 m2 .

A private non-profit corporation commissioned a project for the Museum of Modern Art in Santiago, Chile. This would be paid for with private support and should be self-financing once functioning. For this reason, the project consists of three parts: the Museum itself (1200 square meters); a Design Center with an auditorium and commercial space for rental (2200 square meters); and an Office Building for rent (1600 square meters) with a total of 5000 square meters of construction. The Municipality of Vitacura, in the eastern part of Santiago, offered a site of 7000 square meters located beside the future Park of The Americas, which will border the upper portion of the Mapocho River. From the street, the site lowers some six meters towards the park and river. The complex was projected like an entrance to the future park from the center of Vitacura (some five blocks to the south) mimicking itself likes the park. Taking advantage of the unevenness, the Museum and the Design Center formed a small hill or “hillock” covered with vegetation and walkable above. Besides the rocks, trees, plants, and flowers, there would be works of art in the open air. A type of small “ravine” by a stairway which serves as an open air theatre, continue towards the park, or enter from a pergola-like rotunda to the Museum or to the Design Center. Water from a fountain below the pergola flows towards the forum-plaza at the northern crest of the site. Above the green “hillock” only two architectonic elements jutted out. The high pergola with flowers, whose form is reminiscent of the Caracol/Snail of the United Nations Building (E. Duhart 1964) a small distance from the complex, and a large building (100 meters) of three levels and which forms the eastern border of the site. This has a hermetic red wall which faces the hillock. “The building-wall” contains offices for rental, and serves to conceal the view of the adjacent constructions, leaving only the views of the natural scenery. The red wall is reminiscent of the mountains –just towards the same side- that at dusk take on a reddish hue. Various stairs enter to the roof-walkway over the “building-wall”, where the sculptures would be exhibited. The upper structure of the Museum is composed by vaults (perforated by overhead natural lighting) over which the earth and vegetation are placed. The divisions are movable for flexibility in mounting exhibitions.