Type:
MIT Option Studio

Professor:
Florian Idenburg

Date:
Spring 2020


The MAAT museum in Lisbon, Portugal, invited our studio to reconsider the role of the art museum as a civic institution. The MAAT is a public museum owned by the EDP Energy Group, Portugals’ largest energy provider. MAAT/MRKT asks: what is the relationship between the experience of art works and engagement in civic discourse? How can a building negotiate the conflict between a private institution’s fiscal and cultural ambitions?

The proposal takes on the form of a market. As a type of building, markets are agile and expansive: they spring up where they can. As self-governing places for the exchange of goods, markets set consumer values. But markets also make space on their edges for agonistic regulation and debate: this is where assets become cultural. MAAT/MRKT is a museum concept that aims to cultivate the market’s frictional edge.

The site is directly adjacent to a historic power station, owned by the EDP. An open series of free standing pavillion structures are arranged along a series of CMU shear walls. The pavillions are assembled from steel components re-purposed from the powerstation. The compression-ring roof structures of the pavillions are loaded with construction debris and calçada portuguesa - the traditional street pavers of Lisbon that are currently being replaced.

The pavillions aggregate to give a shady open plan. This in-between area is MAAT/MRKT’s provocation: if private institutions want to serve a public, they must register civic issues in spaces that are both loaded with value and universally accessible. MAAT/MRKT attempts to materialise, foreground and extend a contestable boundary between legislated art-space and indeterminate public-space.

01. south view


02. waterfront view


03. interior view


04. bridge view


05. concept model

06. concept model


07. structural study: zero-sum columns


08. mutsuro sasaki study: tama diaphragm

09. mutsuro sasaki study: sendai flux column

01. plan


02. plan

03. west section


04. structural diagrams


05. concept sketch


06. concept sketch


07. repurposed parts


08. repurposed ballast

09. module model