A Geometric City of Yellow Cubes Create Temporary Museum at Centro Comercial Colombo in Lisbon
With changing consumer behaviour drawing us to open, outdoor spaces versus indoor spaces, art exhibitions have evolved to bring art to our everyday. The Nadir Afonso temporary museum, constructed as a city of yellow cubes, found a home at the busy retail destination Centro Comercial Colombo in Lisbon.
The temporary museum set inside a retail destination brings art to the people.
Larger yellow cubes are used to highlight and house large-scale artwork for emphasis.
Formalized as a geometric and abstract city, built by large yellow cubes, the Nadir Afonso Temporary Museum is an open and fluid space that seeks to create numerous visual and conceptual relationships with the work of the abstractionist artist and Portuguese architect. Challenging the scale of the place and relating to the large-scale artistic works, the ephemeral exhibition structure takes on a colorful and translucent textile skin that builds a lot of volume with little matter.
The Architecture Room is created as a semi-enclosed space for guests.
Providing variations in scale, intensity, proportion and rhythm, the various squares which serve the function of exhibition rooms, of the museum space are defined by self-standing volumes that house the works of art, seeking to take advantage of the verticality (and scale) of the central space of the shopping mall Centro Colombo in Lisbon. Two distinct spatial experiences are nestled amongst the vibrant yellow buildings: the immersive multimedia room and the architecture room.
Buildings of varying heights provide depth to the city, recreating the feeling of a city skyline.
The multi-media room invites guests for an immersive experience.
During the daytime, sunlight illuminates the yellow volumes that are part of the “city”, giving it a surreal aura and comforting warmth. At night, lights turn on from inside the backlit volumes to provide an entirely different spatial experience in the same museum space.
We foresee more and more art exhibitions would make their way into environments where people are already spending their time, bringing art into our everyday lives. We will be able to experience artwork outside of confined museum spaces — an exciting development and opportunity for people to interact with artists and their inspirations. Who else is looking forward to this as much as we are?
The central location underneath the glass dome structure draws in natural sunlight to illuminate the city squares during the day, and emits an ethereal glow from the backlit volumes during the night.
PROJECT DETAILS
Project name: Nadir Afonso Temporary Museum
Architecture Office: Diogo Aguiar Studio
Team: Diogo Aguiar, Daniel Mudrák, Elena Bredariol, Tomáš Pevný, Dominika Widlarz
Location: Centro Colombo, Lisboa, Portugal
Year Completed: July 2021
Total area: 150 m2
Client: State of the Art / Centro Colombo - Sonae Sierra
Photos by Ivo Tavares