Pachacamac Site Museum by Llosa Cortegana Arquitectos. Finalist in the MCHAP 2014/2015

Description of the project by Llosa Cortegana Arquitectos

The Pachacamac Sanctuary is a place where prehispanic architecture moves us with its silence and scale, their promenades are long spaces confined by wall structures that constantly confront us to the worship spaces. Its relationship with the environment is defined by extensive strokes that the occupation over time. Prehispanic architects understood that architecture was a mediation between man and the worship of their gods, with a deep tradition they were allowed to operate their projects from the insertion of specific strategies that adapted to the territory. Thus, the building tradition was defining its architecture and added its innovations to the circumstances of the territory and location.

The new museum lands from a lightness that contrasts with the elements of prehispanic architecture, where the wall defines its main stroke and its promenades are always in tension with the Sanctuary. The Museum allows us to build a museistic reality of the territory.
    
Contemporary architecture tries to speak of prehispanic architecture, taking its elements to build an alternate grammar with which it is allowed to inhabit the symbolic landscape and to define spaces that frame the Sanctuary.

The museum project was born from its relationship with the territory, its topographical stroke and the possibility to establish itself as a mediator with the landscape. Outdoor promenade spaces are hierarchically classified to frame the prehispanic temples. The building adapts to the territory directing the gaze, thus, reinforcing the relationship with the preexistences.

The volumes are folded in a telluric gesture, tensioned by the gaps of its ramp promenades, associated with the prehispanic streets that pilgrims used to approach the temple through linear spaces that ordered the course of the crowds within its walls large scale.

Its materiality is expressed through the fair-face concrete walls framework. is associated with rough plank prehispanic walls, while trying to show its difference through the thickness and mass. In an attempt to build the shadow typology, the project avoids the composition of openings and holes, trying not to compete with the pre-existing structures. The project defines its shape from the wall.

The new building is placed with a weak attitude towards the environment, the scale is handled in complicity with the topography and uneven terrain to avoid breaking into the place. It's just going down to the meeting place where the building is revealed in its full scale. The project demonstrates a deep respect for the sacred territory where it is inserted, manifesting itself at the same time as a laminating layer more related to the long process of transformation of the Sanctuary.