The dispatch Sancho Madridejos projects with Technal the new Museum of Contemporary Art of Alicante

The new Museum of Contemporary Art of Alicante (MACA), work of the architects Juan Carlos Sancho and Sol Madridejos, remains attached to a civil construction that dates of the 17th century, known like Museum of the Ensured, turning it into the main access from the square that chairs the basilica of Santa María. The project, that erige on a solar of 1.200 m² in the historical centre of the city, arises of two singular points. On the one hand, it treats of a building for a payment of art of the years 50-70, that the Alicante artist Eusebio Sempere dona to the city, with works of Calder, Vasarely, Chillida, Julio González or of the own Sempere. On the other hand, with his parameters of desnivel, language, context or orientation, contributes a singular atmosphere, with the presence of the Castle in the high and the marine horizon.

As they affirm the architects: “These two points –the relation with a world of plastic references and perceptivas and the relation with the context of the Historical Centre of Alicante– suggest already a form to understand and to develop the project in his solution so much programática like space or perceptiva”.

The use of the stone goes in in relation with the language conventual of the Church and the historical helmet of the city, in addition to integrating inside an only volume, to the Museum of the Ensured, that has rehabilitated and that at present houses the spaces annexes to the use expositivo. The volume pétreo has finished with a piece vítrea volumétricamente very clear-cut. For the faã§ades has used the system of wall curtain Geode of Technal whereas in the zones of inner connection-external outline with sliding elevables Galene. This system allows to conceive big surfaces glazed, since it admits until 300 kg by leaf, and offers an optimum manoeuvrability thanks to the herrajes elevables sliding that incorporates.

Functionally the building articulates around a central axis of circulations that joins the ancient elements with the new, so much horizontal as vertically.

This main axis divides the building in two clearly differentiated areas, so much from the functional point of view as from the space, as they are the Area Expositiva, to the East, and the Area of Services, west. The first, of new construction, contains the whole of the spaces expositivos, the shop and polyvalent room in low plant and the living room of acts in the first basement. The second incorporates the hall and control in low plant, the library in first plant, and a small administrative zone and of steering in plant second.

The project has been merecedor of the prize in the category ‘Enjoy' of the List of winners architecture Aluminium Technal 2013. The jury, chaired by Ramon Sanabria, awarded the prize to this work “by his clear adecuación and dialogue with the surroundings, without renouncing to his own autonomy, propiciando a surprising interior, improving from the section the treatment of the light”.