PROJECT

New building of MAAT

Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology

Established in 2004, the EDP Foundation is one of the most prominent private foundations in Portugal. In 2011, the Foundation commissioned AL_A to design a contemporary art and cultural space as a counterpoint to the Electricity Museum and to be the next phase of the art campus. The long riverside site, bound by road and rail at the back, presented an opportunity to continue a series of cultural projects along the waterfront that have been developed since the 1990s, which include Vittorio Gregotti’s Cultural Centre of Belém and Paulo Mendes de Rocha’s Coach Museum. The new building is the centrepiece of EDP Foundation’s masterplan for an art campus that includes the repurposed Central Tejo power station.

Blending structure into landscape, the kunsthalle is designed to allow visitors to walk over, under and through the building that sits beneath a gently expressed arch. Public space is as important in today’s museum as the galleries themselves and MAAT incorporates over 7,000m2 of new public space.  The roof itself is conceived as a public space and an outdoor room of the museum. Another vital public place is created along the riverfront, with the cantilevered roof forming an area of welcome shade.

Building on Portugal’s rich tradition of craft and ceramics, almost 15,000 three- dimensional crackle glazed tiles articulate the main façade and produce a complex surface that gives mutable readings of water, light and shadow.

The exhibition spaces are extensions of the public realm, with flowing interconnected places for experiences and interactions at the intersection of the three disciplines. At the centre of the kunsthalle is the Oval Gallery, reached along a sweeping curve that merges circulation with exhibition. Surrounding it are the Main Gallery, a flexible space, and the Project Room and Video Room, two smaller spaces for installations or projections. These spaces complement the galleries of the converted Central Tejo building. ◊