The Fine Arts museum
of Castellón is planned around a courtyard with magnificent cypresses, which
used to belong to the former school of Serra Espada. The building housing the
exhibition rooms is a stack of identical floors in which a double-height space
is shifted forming a tiered series of voids that, while using identical
elements, turns each floor into a different space. Slender in its proportions
and facing the front, the museum guards the treasures of the city like a
sphinx, protected by a shell of cast aluminium slates.
The program of the
museum is organized in four separate areas: public, semi-public, work and
storage. Located in the central building, around the landscaped cloister, are
the private museum annexes and offices (semi-public area). Next to it, on the
eastern side, a newly designed, cube-shaped construction is built to shelter
the exhibition rooms of the permanent collection (public area). On the western
side, and separated from the rest of the buildings, a new longitudinal building
houses the restoration department (the working area). Finally, the storage
space, which is located on the basement, connects the working areas with the
public building.
The artwork exhibited in
this museum is made up of four collections. The museum had therefore to merge
four permanent exhibitions into one building without each one of them losing
its personality. The main building, which houses the permanent collection, is
constructed as a stack of five floors that are different and yet the same. The
five exhibition levels are linked by a cascade of double-height voids that
provide a diagonal view spanning the entire section of the building. This
sectional device enables a strong spatial compactness to be wed to a diversity
of spaces which can be perceived as a succession of three scales: that of the
exhibition rooms, that of the double-height voids, and that of the building as
a whole that is seen through the diagonal space.
TECHNICAL DATA. Location: Avenida de los Hermanos
Bou, Castellón, Spain. Architects: Luis M. Mansilla and Emilio Tuñón. Client: Castellón Cultural S.A. Collaborators:
Andrés Regueiro, Clara Moneo, Matilde Peralta, María Linares, Jaime Prior, Andrés Rojo, Félix Larragueta,
David Nadal, Fernando García-Pino, Jaime Gimeno, Katrien Vertenten, Gregory
Peñate and Oscar F. Aguayo. Structural engineers:
Alfonso Gómez Gaite. Mechanical engineers: J.G. Asociados. Graphic design: Gráfica Futura. Construction manager: Luis M. Mansilla, Emilio
Tuñón and Jaime Prior. Quantity
Surveyor/Technical Architect: Santiago Hernán and Juan Carlos Corona. Competition: 1996. Design project: 1997. Work
completion: 2000. Built area: 12.000 m2. General contractor: Fomento de Construcciones y
Contratas S.A. Photographer: Luis Asín
