National Museum of Roman Art in Spain by Rafael Moneo Plan
AD Classics: National Museum of Roman Art / Rafael Moneo
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Arches accept long been used to marker the greatest achievements of Roman civilization. Constantine, Titus, and Septimus Severus built them to commemorate their military victories. Engineers at Segovia and Nîmes incorporated them into their revolutionary aqueducts. And fifteen hundred years after the Fall of Rome, Rafael Moneo gave a modern touch to the ancient construction in Mérida'due south breathtaking National Museum of Roman Art, located on the site of the one-time Iberian outpost of Emerita Augusta. Soaring arcades of unproblematic, semi-circular arches merge historicity and contemporary design, creating a striking however sensitive indicate of entry to the remains of ane of the Roman Empire's greatest cities.
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Moneo's commission for the museum came in 1979 as role of the Spanish government'south commemoration of the bimillennial anniversary of the founding of Emerita Augusta. Replacing an 1838 museum on the aforementioned site, it was built in the middle of 1 of the largest and best preserved Roman cities in Western Europe, immediately adjacent to an amphitheater and one of the most spectacular surviving aboriginal theaters in the world – the Roman Theater of Mérida.
Moneo, a native Spaniard who at the time was enjoying a wave of publicity post-obit the completion of the Logroño City Hall and the Bankinter edifice in Madrid, was an obvious option for the project, which opened to great fanfare in 1986.
Occupying the lot across the street from the theater, the bulk of the museum is independent inside a lofty, higher up-footing building where space is articulated past a serial of soaring brick arches. This part of the building is a mod take on the basilica type, with upper-story exhibition spaces replacing clerestory balconies forth an open up, amplified fundamental "nave." Natural lite pours in from skylights above the thin arches and fills the space with a warm glow. Beneath the ground level, a subterranean "crypt" immerses visitors into a pristine Roman-era excavation of the sometime city, allowing the museum to simultaneously conserve and exhibit the archeology of the site while interpretively replicating its architecture.
Thin, elongated brickwork, distinctly not-Roman in its shape and perfect uniformity, gives the museum its trademark appearance. Walls, columns, and arches are made of the same textile, but the appearance is far from monotonous; patchworks of aureate and blood-red hues paint the walls in pixelated clusters of color, lit afire by the dramatic overhead lighting. For Moneo, whose body of piece of work displays remarkable stylistic variation, it is perhaps this careful and deliberate control of daylight that makes this edifice characteristically his. As Robert Campbell wrote in a Pritzker retrospective of the architect, "the treatment of the interior daylight is masterful, here an ever-irresolute golden wash. The calorie-free contrasts with the ghostly paleness, therefore the pastness, of the antiquities on brandish." [i]
In this spectacular texture of vertical elements, Moneo articulates a potent polemic on historicity and modernity by freely borrowing ancient motifs and contemporizing them in a way that is neither blindly imitative nor satirically reductive. The triple-banded arches are allusions to the brickwork of the Roman theater across the street, engaging the entirety of the archeological site in a continuous dialogue while asserting a character all their own. The bricks are precise, rhythmic, and beautifully scaled to evoke a sense of refinement only conceivable in a mod project, especially when partnered with the sleek iron railings and floating concrete slabs of the upper floors. Notwithstanding, there is something fundamentally timeless about the simplicity of the structures and their clear invocation of Roman precedent. Grade and fabric belong neither to the present nor to history, allowing the pattern to straddle the gap between the two in a manner uniquely conforming of a modern-twenty-four hours archeological museum.
The coaction of the modern and the ancient exists at even the most conceptual level of the museum's architecture, which carefully balances curated museum exhibits with concrete immersion into untouched archeology. In the museum "crypt," the excavation of the ancient city is rhythmically punctuated by the ordered column grid supporting the structure above, a bold yet sensitive superimposition of ii disparate historical atmospheric condition. Nearby, a complete Roman route runs its jagged course through the heart of the museum, breaking from the regimented orthogonality of Moneo's design as if to assert its unscripted authenticity and unmovable presence in the face of modern civilization. A subterranean tunnel further engages visitors with the greatest landmarks of Emerita Augusta, ushering them directly into the Roman theater and amphitheater beyond the street. These are elements of a design driven entirely by the unique conditions of its site, demonstrating a commitment to deliberate purposefulness that prioritizes programme and thematic integrity over unnecessary architectural noise.
The cavernous to a higher place-ground exhibition spaces appeal to history in some other way however, appropriating the enduring power of architectural ruin. The iconic image of dereliction—a field of freestanding columns that take long outlived the roof they once supported—is hauntingly evoked in the main galleries. Massive structural arches that seem capable of supporting a weighty roof are capped instead by a light, glassy covering, creating an interior condition that feels entirely exposed to the outside globe, as if time has slowly worn through the protective covering of architecture. As a consequence, the space is burdened by none of the oppressive weightiness of a traditional roof and the immersive feel within the archeological site feels all the more authentic.
In an era in which museum commissions also often correspond opportunities for architects to pursue personal agendas with little sensitivity to the objects they are intended to brandish, Moneo'southward museum in Mérida is refreshingly self-aware of its purpose as an exhibition infinite for the city's ancient past. The compages, independently spectacular though it is, serves not to shamelessly promote itself, but to dramatize the achievements of Roman culture without overshadowing them. Information technology is a masterful negotiation of the ancient and the modern, the inventive and the referential, and a successful rethinking of the museum typology through thoughtful contextualization.
- Year : 1986
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Photographs : Flickr user James Gordon, Flickr user Manuel Ramirez Sanchez, Flickr user Tomas Fano, Flickr user : Guzman Lozano, Flickr user Daniel Sancho, Flickr user Magnus von Koeller, Flickr user Alvaro Perez Vilarino, Flickr user Fernando Carrasco, Flickr user Rafael del Pine, Flickr user Sarmale / Olga, Flickr user Rafa Perez, Wikipedia user Xauxa
[1] Campbell, Robert. "Thoughts on José Rafael Moneo." The Pritzker Architecture Prize Website. Accessed 28 Oct. 2014 from http://www.pritzkerprize.com/1996/essay.
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Cite: David Langdon. "AD Classics: National Museum of Roman Art / Rafael Moneo" 01 Oct 2018. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/625552/advertising-classics-national-museum-of-roman-fine art-rafael-moneo> ISSN 0719-8884
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AD经典: 国家古罗马艺术博物馆 / Rafael Moneo
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