MALBA
1. The building´s nighttime lighting provides a negative of its daytime image: it reinforces
the interplay of limestone structures with glass surfaces and metallic components and marks
its presence as a luminous element: low illuminance levels for the stone surfaces with bright,
warm light emerging from the glass apertures
2. The main entrance hall: the staircase down to the auditorium and, right, the temporary
exhibition space bordered by columns: the nighttime illumination comes from the same source as
the daytime lighting: a set of suspended appliances ("Perroquets" style) provide
the lighting in the main hall; a set of lamps emitting oblique, fan lighting
("Radius" style), installed on the top of the outside perimeter wall, light up
the wide glass surface
3. The lighting system in all the exhibition spaces is composed of "Cestello spot
piccolo" type appliances on tracks placed in the cymas, with dichroic halogen lamps
projecting different beams of light (floodlighting for smoothly lighting up the walls, s
potlighting for lighting up specific parts of the sculpture) that can be carefully
directed (+/- 45° on both the horizontal and vertical axes)
The MALBA - Costantini Museum was built after an international
competition was organised as part of the Architecture Biennial/BA ´97 to design a new building
for hosting Eduardo Costantini´s private collection of important works of art from movements
from Latin-American, including Mexico. The outside image of the exhibition galleries features
large prisms of pure and simple geometric forms clad with limestone; glass surfaces were
juxtaposed over the stone structures, almost resting on them, marking the inside boundaries
of the various public spaces and hosting complementary activities ...
The project involved a number of large rooms so that the various galleries could be divided
up and also adapted to the changing conditions of the constantly expanding collection.
... Alternating exhibition and rest spaces and various apertures, opening up views
of the surroundings both from inside the museum and from outside in the city, are the very core
of this museum. Light played an important part in the museum design: a key feature of the
"container and contents." The lighting design was created around a combination of
lighting and architecture. The presence of natural light in all the areas of the building is
another constant: long, narrow slots project light on the walls, large skylights and dormer
windows let in daylight, controlled by a set of multiple "layers" acting as both
filters and diffusers (FLARE, 29, April 2002)
Buenos Aires, Argentina
(In collaboration w/ AFT, Arch. Atelmann, Foucade, Tapia)
