Asturias’ most important art museum, the Museo de Bellas Artes de Asturias in Oviedo, was renovated and extended by Francisco Mangado. The new building shimmers through the openings of the existing building.
Asturias’ most important art museum in Oviedo was renovated and extended by Francisco Mangado. The walls of an entire historic block of houses remain as an outer layer – a new glass façade has been set back, shimmering through the openings of the existing building.
Oviedo, the capital of Asturias, is not exactly known for its cultural treasures or tourist attractions. This could now change: last year, the “Museo de Bellas Artes de Asturias” in Oviedo was extended by Basque architect Francisco Mangado. The museum, previously housed in two makeshift aristocratic palaces, was extended in an unusual way, with Mangado interpreting the traditional vocabulary of Spanish palace architecture in a contemporary way. He opted for a surprising strategy for the extension: the two old buildings – the Palacio de Velarde (1765) and the Casa de Oviedo-Portal (around 1660) – were retained for future museum use, while at the same time the city council managed to buy up five additional plots of land for the museum extension in recent years.
The architect relied on the image of a collage of the existing façade elements, which he positioned additively along Calle Rúa. However, this surrealistic process results in a theatrical stage effect that conceals from passers-by “prima vista” what is revealed behind the backdrop in a choc-like manner: a powerful, opaque glass wall that towers up like a looming mountain massif.
Two facades
Anyone approaching the museum from the Plaza de la Catedral will not notice the succession of façade sections at first, although the roof structure with its acute-angled skylights is somewhat disconcerting. Only the new entrance on Calle Rúa – an opening in the opaque glass wall hidden behind the classicist archways – makes the clash between old and new, between traditional and modern materials tangible. Mangado constructed an architectural palimpsest – with an outer urban façade and an inner museum façade. He wanted to explore how such contrasting façade constructions relate to each other: “My intention was to construct a completely new building behind the historical façade and thus provoke a tension that makes the architectural intensity between the old and the new palpable.”
In reality, things are even more complicated, as the Basque architect took the relationship between visible and invisible to the extreme: behind the opaque museum wall, there is another wall that remains largely hidden from the visitor as an additional façade element. It runs parallel to the staircase and frames the characteristic perforated façade that has already become the trademark of Mangado’s Archaeological Museum in Vitoria.
Behind the stone shell, the “mineral materiality” of the new architectural structure spreads out – as Mangado understands it: it operates a play of openings that stands for Mangado’s understanding of architectural intensity – as formal, visual and functional. Thus, the view from outside, through the openings in the historic façade, only allows a glimpse of the structure of the museum extension, while the museum visitor from inside only perceives the city through the perforated façade and in a heavily filtered manner.
The Museo de Bellas Artes de Asturias has finally received a boost in attractiveness thanks to Francisco Mangado’s extension. Although the new building only houses Spanish artists from the last few decades, the masters such as Picasso, Zurbarán, de Ribera, Goya and El Greco, who were previously housed in the adjoining palaces, now shine much brighter.
You can find out more in Baumeister 10/2015
