33. Castellon Museum

Location

Avenida de los Hermanos Bou, Castellón, España

Architects

Luis M. Mansilla y Emilio Tuñón

Team

Andrés Regueiro, Clara Moneo, Matilde Peralta, María Linares, Andrés Rojo, Félix Larragueta, David Nadal, Fernando García-Pino, Jaime Gimeno, Katrien Vertenten, Gregory Peñate y Oscar F. Aguayo

Client / Owner

Luis M. Mansilla y Emilio Tuñón

Management

Luis M. Mansilla, Emilio Tuñón y Jaime Prior

Technical Consultant

J.G. Asociados, Alfonso Gómez Gaite

Quantity Surveyor

Santiago Hernán, J. Carlos Corona

General Contractor

Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas S.A

Competition Date

1996

Project Date

1997

Completion Date

2000

Gross Area

12.000 m²

SYNOPSIS
The Castellón Fine Arts Museum revolves around a gardened cloister with magnificent cypress trees, belonging to the former Serra Espadá school. The building housing the exhibition halls is a stacking of floors of equal dimensions, where a double-height space shifts, like a cascade of voids that, using the same elements, transforms each floor into a different place. Slender in proportions and facing forward, it guards the city's treasures like a sphinx, protected by a shell of cast aluminum plates, engraved with the museum's name, like the inscriptions on the ancient Roman bricks preserved in the museum: MUSEU DE BELLES ARTS.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION
The museum program is structured into four distinct areas: public, semi-public, work, and storage. These areas are organized into three clearly differentiated buildings. In the central building, around the gardened cloister, are the museum's closed areas and offices (semi-public area). Attached to this, on the east side of the complex, a new cubic building is constructed, housing the various exhibition halls for the permanent collection (public area). On the west side, separated from the existing building, a new longitudinal structure houses the restoration facilities (work area). Lastly, in the basement, under the restoration pavilion, are the storage areas (storage area), connecting the work areas and the exhibition building.

The main building, which houses the permanent collection, is constructed as a stack of five equal but different floors. The five exhibition levels are intersected by a cascade of double-height spaces, allowing a diagonal view that spans the entire building, reaching down to the semi-basement courtyard. This sectional mechanism enables the compatibility of high spatial compactness with a diversified spatial perception, such that when a visitor walks through a floor, they experience a sequence of spaces with three different scales: the scale of the rooms, the scale of the double-height spaces, and the diagonal space that crosses the entire building.

The museum is built with white concrete walls and slabs, with the exterior finish relying on a single material: recycled cast aluminum, in plates and slats, which, as a self-imposed restriction, establishes a strict dimensional order for the entire complex.