Museo Soumaya Has a Secret
Museo Soumaya has a Secret By Free-style structure, invisible now, made its unique façade a reality. Denise Allen Zwicker The new Museo Soumaya in Mexico City has been described as “dazzling,” “a trapezoid in motion,” “a shiny silver cloud-like structure reminiscent of a Rodin sculpture,” and “the world’s flashiest museum.” Designed by maverick young architect Fernando Romero, it also was called “impossible to build.” The façade, in particular, presented huge challenges. If anyone could make it happen, it was owner Carlos Slim Helú, the world’s wealthiest man. Slim constructed the museum in 2008-2011 as part of the Plaza Carso, his distinctive multi-use development in Mexico City’s Polanco. Slim has noted that, since many Mexicans cannot afford to travel overseas to view art collections, he believed it was important to house a prestigious collection of international art in Mexico. Free to the public, the Soumaya houses more than 60,000 pieces of Our modular process art on six floors that offer 6,000 square meters of exhibition space. The top-floor sculpture garden, dominated by a spectacular skylight, displays numerous Rodins. Museo Soumaya, named for Slim’s makes your building a snap . late wife, also contains a 350-seat auditorium, a public library, a gift shop and a café. Each of the floor plans in the museum is distinct in its shape, and the weight of the building is upheld by a skeleton of 28 curved-steel vertical columns and seven floor slabs that frame the whimsical form. The complex, “impossible to build” façade consists of 16,000 shiny aluminum hexagons that appear architecture.geometrica.com to “float” on its surface, separated by just millimeters from each other.
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