The Adriana Varejão Gallery by Tacoa Arquitetos was commissioned to shelter two works of the artist acquired by the museum Inhotim Centro de Arte Contemporânea: the sculpture Linda do Rosário and the polyptych Celacanto Provoca Maremoto.
Inhotim Centro de Arte Contemporânea is located in Brumadinho (Brazil). The museum has an unusual architectural concept: instead of sum up all its installations into a unique building, it is composed of many pavilions spread out in a park of approximately 35 hectares.
The project of the Adriana Varejão Gallery should occupy a hillside with a small slope partially surrounded by the native forest, an area formerly used to store containers. The original topography was modified for this new use: a huge displacement of earth has cut it, creating the great horizontal plane necessary to the storage.
The orientation of the project aimed to recompose the site’s original topography and inserting on it an artificial element: a regular block in reinforced concrete (prestressed wasn’t necessary), partially inserted in the hillside.
The building structure is composed by an irregular retaining wall that gains the space in the ground floor and receives the loads of the block, in its deepest part, trough two beams, in the middle, trough 4 columns integrated in the wall. The building was also conceived as a spiral path that connects two different levels of the park, alternating moments of contraction/passage and expansion/exhibition.
Images courtesy of Eduardo Eckenfels, Vicente de Mello
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