Home > 
The MUSAC - Castile and Leon Museum of Contemporary Art

The MUSAC - Castile and Leon Museum of Contemporary Art

 


The MUSAC - Castille and Leon Museum of Contemporary Art has been designed as a large cultural area, with its construction based on a series of adjoining spaces. The building, designed by the architects Emilio Tuñón and Luis M. Mansilla, attempts to achieve: "a space for culture, this being understood as the visible expression of the links between mankind and ideas".

The architects were faced with a peculiar area: a geometry that plays with two polygons, the square and rhombus, and that allows a continuous regular or irregular area to be developed on a single plane.

The project is defined as a latticework of squares and isosceles rhombuses with 11 metre long sides. This geometrical arrangement provides a flexible solution, with a dynamic that distinguishes the different areas and spaces.

The visitor is struck by the main façade, a tribute to the stained glass windows of Leon Cathedral. In fact, the building rises up like a new cathedral. The 37 colours that greet the visitor on the main façade of the building were obtained with the aid of a computer program from the "Falconer" stained glass window in Leon cathedral. The whole complex is covered with 3,351 pieces of glass that contrast subtly with the dynamic of the plane of the building.

The effect is achieved by the combination of the purity and simplicity of the white concrete inside the building with the glass envelope, marked by horizontal lines of rolled steel, that forms its skin.

A commercial area housing a shop, cafeteria and restaurant, internal premises and public rooms, which range from a teaching workshop or assembly room to a library, shares the space with the 3,400 m2 occupied by MUSAC´s five exhibition rooms.

An aspect that adds value to exhibition rooms for the MUSAC´s collection is their versatility, which allows them to be subdivided or extended as required by the distribution of the different exhibitions.