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Mexico FREE ty photos edged out Bill Gates for the title of world’s wealthiest wealthiest of world’s for the title Bill Gates out edged for the telecom named The , individual. monument, stands as an enigmatic wife, late billionaire’s though But streetscape. nothing else on the Mexico City like Fernando much is very the design “dream,” be Slim’s may it well as Rem as office of Jean Nouvel’s An alumnus Romero’s. years ago firm 12 his own founded the architect Koolhaas’, Romero Enterprise Fernando and to date, the age of 28, at realized some 25 projects. (FREE) has been have the works and for the last 17 years art collector, part of in the southern a makeshift at on display Carso Grupo conglomerate Slim’s ago, Four years the city. acquired a 12-acre parcel near the corner of Presa Falcon yard industrial the time a dusty at Cervantes, and Miguel de Fernando Romero stared back at queuing shoppers from the from the queuing shoppers Romero stared back at Fernando gleaming stood the his right To of Quién magazine. cover in the Museo Soumaya project, of his latest paraboloid “Slim’s read, a headline that it and over Mexico City, Romero Realized His Father-in- Fernando How Soumaya: Dream.” Law’s In March, In March, text

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ARCHITECT may 2011 WWW.ARCHITECTMAGAZINE.COM 238 ARCHITECT may 2011 WWW.ARCHITECTMAGAZINE.COM 241 The architect was familiar, of course, with the with of course, familiar, was The architect of this open-ended no doubt, As a consequence, remains in what stands out certainly a form that It’s for referent outside one definitive however, There is, be also might there is another visual cue that But collection that the museum was meant to house— meant was the museum that collection by sculptor of works the largest number including all he about was that France—but outside Rodin Auguste the When the office received to go on. and his team had program,” a museological given weren’t “we commission, the completion overseeing who’s Domínguez, Laura says designer with in collaboration interiors of the building to be was it that was knew we “All Teran. Andrés Mier y meters [172,223 square and 16,000 square floors six gallery to fit in had the museum where as the site as well feet],” for . devising was the firm plan that the master opened to were before the doors week to the very up Even still piecing together were organizers museum the public, and why. would go where what mission, their curatorial from proceeded of the building the development brief, formal different with Experimenting in. the outside wedges and piled cubes and skewed conceits—staggered schemes—the and discarded among the considered were to familiar already on a configuration settled designers a proposal FREE submitted In 2005, most in the office. for the Beijing tower and observation for a landmark the structure of a building, toadstool a looming Olympics: screen for digital as a dynamic to double was of which That and scroll across surface. would roll its that images outline paraboloid hyperbolic its but a no-go, project was the basic envelope belt-tightening, a little with became, for Soumaya. train, One freight part of town. rough-and-ready a very still rumbles bound for a bread factory around the corner, the door; odd hours just steps from the front past at As an urban artifact, by a Costco. is occupied plot adjacent rhetoric its willfully of a sphinx, is a bit the museum conventional that admits readily the designer but obtuse; a do “When you on his agenda. wasn’t symbolism exercising a you’re Beijing], conceptual project [like and then it a discovery, make certain muscle—you Romero. says recurs,” Guggenheim Museum in Wright’s Lloyd Soumaya—Frank sequence an almost identical Romero deploys York. New solely though here they’re intended ramps, of interior The open floors, not for exhibition: for circulation, are column, support slanted by a single only interrupted and sculpture. for paintings showrooms used as flexible approach, Wright’s to This seems in part a corrective art has for viewing of his ramps since the suitability the also lacks Soumaya yet been in question; always divided light, natural and abundant unity Guggenheim’s in choosing case, In any compartments. airless is into as it one shot higher than have Romero could hardly a model, most famous . of the world’s visitors the first thing that It’s to the design. read as a key in alone sitting , Rodin’s on arrival: encounter The sculpture’s floor. first on Soumaya’s atrium the wide and thought poised between profile, robust torqued, for synecdoche obvious a fairly it seems to make action, stands. it in which building the brawny home to a tire factory. Today, christened Plaza Carso, it’s it’s christened Carso, Plaza Today, to a tire factory. home plazas—all public and towers office a district of modern by designed buildings the new and most of planned, of it a setting for Soumaya. Romero as ree Defined by its mushroomlike form and its skin of form and its skin of by its mushroomlike Defined the Museo tiles, aluminum hexagonal locally sourced is bottom) to and opposite top image (this Soumaya billionaire by Carso—developed in the Plaza located his son-in-law, designed by Slim and largely Carlos Romero. architect Fernando design→ f design→ design→ free

The museum’s second-floor lobby (this image) is column-free, save for one slanted support that cuts into the gallery above. On the upper floors, artworks are shown either in display cases (with crafted circulation paths, opposite top) or hung on freestanding partitions (opposite middle), since art cannot be hung off of the curving, elastomeric-coated interior walls. Sinuous circulation ramps (opposite bottom) lead from floor to floor and gallery to gallery. 244 design→ free A R

CHIT E Ground-Floor Plan Second-Floor Plan

CT Theater may 2011

Lobby Café

Offices Entrance

Third-Floor Plan Fourth-Floor Plan

Gallery Gallery

Fifth-Floor Plan Sixth-Floor Plan

Gallery Gallery

Seventh-Floor Plan Eighth-Floor Plan WWW.ARCHITECTMAGAZINE.COM

Gallery Skylit gallery A curving ramp leads from the seventh floor to the cavernous eighth-floor gallery (this image). A venue for showcasing Slim’s large collection of Rodin and Dalí sculptures, the gallery is the only publicly accessible space in the museum with natural daylight, which filters 0 40 80 N in through a skylight. 246 design→ free

A R Pile Cap at Uplift Restraint CHIT E Toolbox: Skin

CT Flowers tied with yarn: that’s what Soumaya looks like under

may 2011 its skin. Around the building perimeter, 28 steel columns— built in segments that vary in width and position—rise from a concrete podium. These tall, tubular stalks are cinched and bound by a system of seven horizontal beams, one at each floor level, that bind the bundle together, helping bear up the floors and keeping the vertical columns from buckling outward. (The skeleton is open at the top save for an elaborate truss supporting a bubble skylight that brings daylight into the eighth-floor gallery.) Over and around this structure wraps a nine-layer façade. With no apertures of any kind—except in the concrete base that houses the museum offices—the skin comprises, from outside in, a coat of hexagonal aluminum tiles, waterproofing layer, a series of galvanized steel plates, and a 3D mesh structure of hexagonal links. These materials clad the tubular steel structure on the exterior, but the layers continue on the other side of the supports to form the interior walls: another layer of 3D mesh, followed by a layer of gypsum panels, polystyrene insulation, concrete plaster, and finally a layer of Weatherlastic (an elastomeric wall coating) that forms the gallery walls, and from which, notably, art cannot be hung. But the hallmark of the project is those hexagonal aluminum tiles that give the building its deflated-soccer-ball appearance. To hear the designers tell it, “nobody really knew” when the project began just how those more than 14,000 shiny scales would have to be shaped in order to adhere to the contours of such a highly irregular surface. After much prototyping, the firm finally arrived at a system of 49 discrete “families” of hexagons, with seven primary genera dominating the field. The result is not a perfectly contiguous shell, but a complex patina, the patterns of the reflective tiles alternating with the dark gaps of exposed weatherproofing snaking between them. Worth noting, too, is the building’s focus on domestically sourced materials. Carlos Slim specified the use of homegrown building supplies whenever possible: Mexican plaster coats the museum walls, and Mexican aluminum covers the exterior. The rolled steel piping used in those vertical stems is Mexican as well—manufactured, as it happens, by a wholly owned subsidiary of Grupo Carso.

Project Credits Lighting Designer Lighteam—Gustavo Avilés Metal Iasa Façade Consultant Gehry Technologies Millwork Hankö hankogroup.com; ArqT Project Museo Soumaya, Mexico City Size 336,946 square feet (including basement) Plumbing and Water System Hubard y Bourlon Client Fundación Carlos Slim Cost Withheld Roofing Swecomex (steel structure) swecomex.com; Architect FREE Fernando Romero Enterprise, Mexico City—Fernando Lacosa (concrete); Ypasa (coating) ypasa.com.mx Romero, Mauricio Ceballos (lead designers); Ana Gabriela Alcocer, Materials and Sources Wallcoverings Plaster (tecnomuro); Weatherlastic Alan Aurioles, Iván Javier Avilés, Albert Beele, Eduardo Benítez, Max (elasticated plaster) Betancourt, Libia Castilla, Ophelie Chassin, Víctor Chávez, Joaquín Acoustical System Consultant Omar Saad Wayfinding Recisa recisa.com Collado, Francisco Javier de la Vega, Manuel Díaz, Laura Domínguez, Carpet Brio Design Windows, Curtainwalls, and Doors AGR agrpuertasmetalicas.com; Alberto Duran, Thorsten Englert, Daniel Alejandro Farías, Omar Concrete Lacosa Dimeyco cestek-dimeyco.com.mx Gerala Félix, Hugo Fernández, Matthew Fineout, Luis Flores, Raúl Exterior Wall Systems Industrial Afiliara (aluminum hexagon Flores, Luis Fuentes, Luis Ricardo García, Raúl García, Gerardo Galicia, cladding) industrialafiliada.com; Grace Construction Products Olga Gómez, Herminio González, Wendy Guillen, Elena Haller, Ana (waterproof membrane) graceconstruction.com; Geometrica Design Paula Herrera, David Hernández, Jorge Hernández, Raúl Antonio (galvanized steel plates, 3D structural mesh) Hernández, Susana Hernández, Wonne Ickxs, Diego Eumir Jasso, gemetrica.com; Swecomex (tubular columns) swecomex.com; WWW.ARCHITECTMAGAZINE.COM Cecilia Jiménez, Saúl Miguel Kelly, Pedro Lechuga, Juan Andres USG Corp. (Sheetrock) usg.com; Ypasa (poliesthirene insulation, López, Juan Pedro López, Ana Medina, Cynthia Meléndez, Guillermo concrete plaster, elasticated plaster) ypasa.com.mx Mena, Ignacio Méndez, Camilo Mendoza, Jesús Monroy, Mario Flooring Hankö (German white oak) hankogroup.com; Mora, Ángel Ortiz, Iván Ortiz, Kosuke Osawa, Cesar Pérez, Tiago Alta Spain (Greek marble) Pinto, Sergio Rebelo, Dolores Robles-Martínez, Alma Delfina Rosas, Furniture Industrias Ideal (auditorium seats) industriasideal.com; Rodolfo Rueda, Mariana Tafoya, Abril Tobar, Sappho Van Laer, Hugo ArqT (carpentry) Vela, Homero Yánez, Dafne Zvi Zaldívar (project team) Glass Aluvisa aluvisa.com Interior Designer FREE, MYT—Andrés Mier y Teran (CEO) HVAC Dypro-Cyvsa www.cyvsa.com Structural Engineer Colinas de Buen Insulation Ypasa ypasa.com.mx Construction Manager Inpros Lighting Lighteam lighteam.eu General Contractor Carso Infraestructura y Contrucción Masonry and Stone PC Constructores