Genève, Switzerland

Museum of Ethnography

International competition. 2° Prize. Geneva, Switzerland. 2008

The program of the competition called to enlarge and to improve the capacity of the museum in order to locate in the existing building the non-public spaces of the museum: administration, offices, workshops of repair, places of treatment, etc, and at the same time to design a new building that houses the public activities: hall and reception, space for large sculptures, library, coffeeshop, bookshop, exhibitions rooms, spectacles auditorium, conferences rooms and ateliers. Simplifying: they were asking to use the existing building as a logistic support for a new building that, located in the park, would become the new museum. The following is the office’s competition proposition: The old building which was born at the dawn of the XXth century can have, 100 years later, at the dawn of the new century, a twilight not less deserving as announced. Decline, which will allow the old museum to take advantage at least, and in name of what is politically correct, of a fate of privileged spectator of the arrival of its successor, the new building; who comes to put it in suspended death. Or it can have on the other hand, another 100 years later and at the dawn of the XXIth century, a new revival which will allow it to take advantage of a second youth. And who knows, even until the dawn of the XXIIth century. We prefer this last possibility. It is more honorable than the previous one for the old building; and it could produce a surprising result. Empty, fill, heighten; those are the operations which allow us to put into practice an idea and to make a success of this second possibility. The old building empties out as a result of the extra floors of privative work spaces added above it -work spaces which should have occupied the building according to the competition specifications. Its bare walls are ready now to be filled with space, a single space with colossal dimensions: 113m length, 15m height and 10m width. A public main street covered, with free access in which the activities will succeed one another presently throughout hours and days. This street will be a new meeting place for the inhabitants of Geneva. A space to be there, to pass a good moment of the day ; drinking a coffee or looking for a book in the bookshop or in the library. A place where to relax by admiring the sculptures which will appear openly, a place where to discover new horizons by attending the diverse performances and the films of the programming of the museum. The youngest can take advantage of it with the propositions of the workshops of dance and music. Everything will take place in this immense inner courtyard. The street will guide in the horizontal, but also in the vertical line. It will take the public towards the lower and the upper extreme of the building. Downward, it will allow to reach exibition rooms. Black boxes surrounded with the wide spaces of circulation and relaxation, flooded with zenithal light. Upward, it will lead towards a new viewpoint of the city, a mark of urban scale. This vertical element is a new totem, contemporary this time, that replaces the original totems from Alaska that have flanked for sixty years the entry of the museum, using them as emblem and urban sign.

Europaconcorsi Beta

Museum of Ethnography