Francisco Mangado & Asociados’ Fine Arts Museum of Asturias has won the 2016 ARCHMARATHON Award in the Arts & Culture category. The judges particularly appreciated the way the architects reconciled the new spaces with the existing construction.
Francisco Mangado & Asociados designed the Fine Arts Museum of Asturias in the historic centre of Oviedo, Spain. The project required construction of new spaces integrated into the existing historic context. The museum complex is located in two buildings in the historic city centre: the 1765 Palacio Velarde and the 1660 Casa di Oviedo-Portal.
The architects were asked to design a new identity for the museum which respected the buildings’ history while remaining independent of their historical and architectural substrate.
Francisco Mangado preserved the façades of the historic buildings, and the new building can only be glimpsed through the unframed windows in the existing ones: a bright steel and glass building that towers over the historic buildings and gives the museum a new identity of its own.
The second essential element in the project is the courtyard in the block, which becomes a meeting-place linking the buildings in the museum complex. This layout also permits optimal, clear organisation of the entrances and tour routes and better conditions for showing and viewing the works in the collection, which includes paintings by El Greco, Titian and Guido Reni.
Design: Francisco Mangado & Asociados
Location: Oviedo, Spain
Images courtesy of ARCHMARATHON photo by Pedro Pegenaute
www.fmangado.es
www.archmarathon.com
