Connecting art and urbanism
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The open air museum: landscape and urbanism. Our design evolved out of the city of Favignana, our arguments and vision are based on the principles of urbanism. We “read” the building like one would read an urban plan. The overall aim of the project is to connect the castle with the city. We propose one main art route which connects the city, nature, the existing museum and the new one. Favignana itself is furnished as the first exhibition room through art installations in public places. Thus the island is transformed into one big open air museum. The city of Favignana has a very dense urban fabric. It resembles the jail’s floor plan remarkably well: a big, solid volume with dark corridors and chambers. We opted for an urban interpretation of the jail: streets (corridors), squares (structurizing open spaces and patio’s) and houses (rooms).
The art route (yellow), which already starts in the city, is the backbone of our design. Different art installations are placed along the way. Starting in the city of Favignana, the route cuts through the landscape, but blends in with it very well, and ends on the hilltop. In order to join both existing buildings on the hilltop, we extended the route up to the main building. The right construction is set up as an entrance hall with a reception desk and a multifunctional space. The open space in between the two buildings (together with the smallest building) enables the creation of an area that can be used by the community for a variety of purposes (e.g. parties). The route connects all open museum spaces (blue).
Way-finding and orientation. In the main building, the urban plan is also reflected in the museum (second floor). We deliberately chose to install the museum on the second floor because there only small adjustments are needed to meet the requirements of a museum space. As a starting point for the organization of the museum space, we focus on orientation and way-finding. This makes us add a transverse shaft at each end of the central corridor. This central corridor functions as a street, connecting the shafts (squares) and joining the rooms (houses). The street and squares are open air, the rooms housing the artworks are closed spaces.
Restaurant + Museum terrace
Artist residence Museum Shop Reception desk
Facilities. In contrast to the various small rooms packed closely together inside the castle, we propose two open ‘cavities’, namely the entry with reception desk and the restaurant ( in the "main" building). In the latter, visitors and artists are welcome to cook and/or eat with a view of the art, overlooking the sea and the magnificent landscape. The two open spaces function as "engine" for the museum site and can be used for a variety of purposes by the public. Level C is furnished as living accommodation and workspace for the artists. Thus a relationship is established between the museum visitors and the artists: they can observe each other through the patio's, without interfering with each other.
reception desk
restaurant
Design-approach, Argumentation & vision. We searched for a way to transform the existing volumes into a fully functioning contemporary museum without mutilating the landscape by adding extra architectural volumes. “How to turn
an old, deserted jail into a modern museum?” We consider the existing relief (many different levels ) and the existing buildings to be very valuable: the landscape and architecture (already) exist in perfect harmony. Not only are the hill/ rocks and the construction volumes in balance, they even reinforce each other. The positioning of the two buildings, with the rocky space in between , enables the creation of an ideal space to be used by the community (two buildings and two walls formed by the relief defining a square). Thus, adding extra spaces would be pointless. It would only lead to a form of architecture which would be either inferior to the existing buildings, or try to overshadow them. This cannot be the aim of the design. Inside the buildings, we limit our interventions in the existing architecture to what is absolutely necessary in terms of orientation and way-finding. The creation of the shafts involves the cutting out of stone, which however will be used in the construction of the pathway and the square, thus recycling the cut out material.