Automotion Museum
Tangential Directions: the Automotive Museum.
The Automotive Museum is to be located on a piece of land delimited by the former Toledo highway, which currently leads to the village of Torrejón de la Calzada, and by the new motorway that veers from north to northeast along that side of the lot, deflected like the air stream against the moving cars that travel on this road. The lot is also bounded on a third side by an old drovers road. Far from superfluous or secondary, the nature of this property line is a reminder of the origins of the area and of how city outskirts have evolved and changed. Such developments, the outcome of industrial and post-industrial growth, owe their viability to one of its most prominent offspring: the automobile.
1. The Rules of the Game
The siting for the building is subject to certain restrictions intrinsic to the lot, the result of a number of rules of the game affecting the erection of the building itself.
Although the lot measures approximately 60,000 sq m., there is yet another boundary, a natural one in this case, that must be taken into account: the Varahondas Stream, which divides it into two 30,000-square-metre sub-lots. The Automotive Museum will be built on the northern-most of the two, adjacent to the former Toledo highway.
The specific site of the building on the lot is contingent as well on other, virtual rather than material, limits or bounds: namely, the mandatory setbacks from the motorway and road. The roughly triangular useable area resulting from these requisites has determined the first decision regarding the actual shape of the building, which will be cylindrical. The optimal relationship between the mass of the building and the open space described by the building circumference, which will be tangential to the boundaries, will unequivocally link the building to its location.
2. Circus and Tower
The structures cylindrical form and large size will seek to establish relationships with one of the most attractive geographies in Spain, reinterpreting the Roman circus and its predecessor, the coliseum. However, at the same time, and because of its position in the landscape, it will allude to the great Castilian fortifications of the Middle Ages: castles and towers.
The fortified nature of the building, which we could consider to be the second decision regarding its physical shape, also arises from its relationship with the immediate surroundings. Thus, the building is wrapped in a massive metalwork structure, an introspective wall that protects it by closing it off from the outside. This gives rise to two complementary situations: the building channels the perceptions of those who contemplate it inwards, while at the same time it is distinctly visible from the surrounding road infrastructure.
3. Infrastructural Scale
The Automotive Museum will be a standalone building, characterized by its infrastructural scale and introverted nature, one of the constants of Spanish architecture; a fortification perforated with round skylights, whose arrangement in plan view will form a machine-oriented area around the cars in the Barreiros collection.
The exhibit area is the outcome of volumetric perforation based on a simple system of homothetic repetition of the overall cylinder; on the one hand, due to the large scale of the shell, this generates a single space for uninterrupted transit, a concatenation of smaller areas connected by the interstices between cylindrical light wells. And on the other it establishes a visual cross-connection among the different strata of the building through the glass cylinders that pierce it.
4. Metal Blocks
Each piece of sheet metal making up the outside frame of this huge machine will be made of the recycled remains of the very objects that will be on display inside the building: car bodies, which, at the end of their useful lives, and after having the engine and other recoverable parts removed, will be cleaned and crushed to become an essential part of the cladding of a building that will pay tribute to their own kind.
The use of compacted cars to build the facade of the Automotive Museum not only entails applying an element aimed to stimulate visitors memories, but represents a proactive attitude towards the recycling process, the creative re-use of discards.
5. Tangential Directions.
In conclusion, the intentions of the design for the Automotive Museum are anchored in three tangential directions.
The first links it to the past, connecting it to the purpose and use of the building: it is the history of the automotive industry, the history of the development and evolution of this most optimistic of industries.
The second relates to the site: the surrounding roadways towards which the building looks and with which it blends, emphasizing the present of the automotive industry in the reference to the tangential vehicle traffic on the roads that bound the building.
Finally, a third tangential direction arises from the recycled metal mass that envelops the building and the technical solutions that protect it, establishing the future plan of sustainability that encompasses both the automotive and architectural industries within a framework of public awareness and social responsibility.
Mansilla & Tuñón, Oct. 2006.