The extension that will be carried out comes to complete the original project as a building that occupies the entire block. When the National Museum of Roman Art of Mérida began to be built in 1980, a group of homes on the corner of the José María Álvarez Sáenz de Buruaga Promenade and the Museum Street, made the Museum not be configured as an exempt building, occupying all plot. The project remained for 25 years, waiting for the opportunity that this space could be incorporated into the museum.
The Junta de Extremadura, through a patient process, acquired the aforementioned homes. Once he managed to acquire all of them, he proceeded to demolish them in order to expand the dependencies of the Museum. After the completion of the appropriate archaeological studies, the site was assigned to the Ministry to proceed with the drafting of the project. The project will be developed in a trapezoidal plot with dimensions of 9.40m x 19.10m on its parallel faces and 22.50m x 25.10m on the other two.
The basic program proposes a temporary exhibition hall, an auditorium for 240 people, new stores, reading rooms for the library and improvements to the current units where they work, both researchers and employees.
The Junta de Extremadura, through a patient process, acquired the aforementioned homes. Once he managed to acquire all of them, he proceeded to demolish them in order to expand the dependencies of the Museum. After the completion of the appropriate archaeological studies, the site was assigned to the Ministry to proceed with the drafting of the project. The project will be developed in a trapezoidal plot with dimensions of 9.40m x 19.10m on its parallel faces and 22.50m x 25.10m on the other two.
The basic program proposes a temporary exhibition hall, an auditorium for 240 people, new stores, reading rooms for the library and improvements to the current units where they work, both researchers and employees.
The first studies - in which we explored the possibility of extending the brick - led us to the conclusion that it was more interesting to maintain a certain distance, not to see the extension as a simple extension of the Museum. The fact that the memory of what was the residential building that was to be absorbed by the Museum was present, seemed to us to be the most appropriate ... we chose to make the concrete / brick encounter take place without striking contrast.
... The corner loses value: it is not the result of the encounter of two homogeneous walls. Rather the opposite. The corner underlines the value of the abstract plan of the described facade and gives rise, by means of a setback, to the fact that the two facades that define the non-mediating volume of the new construction are produced independently.
... The corner loses value: it is not the result of the encounter of two homogeneous walls. Rather the opposite. The corner underlines the value of the abstract plan of the described facade and gives rise, by means of a setback, to the fact that the two facades that define the non-mediating volume of the new construction are produced independently.
Excerpts from project memory
