Description

It was not an existing collection of modern art, but primarily the desire to see a work of Richard Meier’s in Barcelona that led to that prominent architect being awarded the brief and given the opportunity to influence the choice of location. Although the rectangular ground plan of the building, 120 metres long and 35 metres wide – necessitating the demolition of several blocks in the densely populated port quarter of Raval – follows the block development of the quarter, in its radiant brightness and artificial immaculateness, it forms a sharp contrast on the whole to the dilapidated gloominess of its surroundings.

The museum consists of three different parts that are very evident from the north, while on the south side, the independently-structured show façade integrates them: a long, three-storey main block for the exhibition rooms, a rotunda serving as an atrium and reading room, and finally, separated from that block by a passageway running across the building, a narrow, seven-storey wing for the administration, the library, and other facilities.

The effectively staged access leads visitors from a dark entrance area, through the rotunda, partially lit by bands of glass, into an enormous triple nave flooded with light. Beyond the glass entrance wall, a ramp leads upwards in a series of counterpoised diagonals and opens views to the exterior and, over a ravine lit from above by a glazed band in the roof, onto the gallery wing. Two bridges lead into the axially-arranged exhibition rooms that are lit from above on the topmost floor, and on the floors below are lit laterally by light slits and wall openings.

As the space-creating element, light is the dominant theme of this architecture that seeks not only to be a neutral container, but also to represent its own possibilities in the dissolution of very complex volumes and the combination of different forms.

Architectural Design 3-4/1991, pp. 46-53 • Museo d’arte e architettura, exhibition catalogue, Lugano, 1992, pp. 134-141 • James Steele (ed.), Museum Builders, Berlin, 1994, pp. 130-131 • architektur aktuell 190/1996, pp. 42-53 (Juli Capella and Quim Larrea) • Bauwelt 17/1996, pp. 1013-1017 (Lluis Permanyer) • Silvio Cassarà, Richard Meier, Basel/Boston/Berlin, 1996, pp. 156-157 • Victoria Newhouse, Towards a New Museum, New York, 1998, pp. 66-72 • Frank Maier-Solgk, Die neuen Museen, Cologne, 2002, pp. 26-33

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Originally published in: Paul von Naredi-Rainer, Museum Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2004.