Charlotte Fernández
UKIMEA Press Office,Leeds
Arup has played a central role in the engineering and lighting design for the new Jumex Museum which opened on 16 November in the heart of Mexico City.
The new museum is the result of close collaboration between Arup and David Chipperfield Architects, together the two firms have successfully delivered a strikingly elegant, and technically complex, building.
The 2,500 square metre, four-story museum will house what is believed to be the largest contemporary art collection in private hands in Latin America.
The museum’s defining feature is a distinctive asymmetric roof, which incorporates industrial saw tooth roof lights. While it is essential to avoid direct sunlight in galleries, Chipperfield’s vision saw the museum’s top floor brought to life by harnessing indirect sunlight. As a result, the gallery's lighting experiences a dynamic relationship with its external environment as the sun moves across the sky and the cloudscape changes.
Arup provided specialist lighting services throughout the project. The results of this work can also be seen in the facade openings, which exploit the natural daylight experienced on each level of the museum, as well as in the fluorescent lighting system that provides ambient lighting after dark.
"The first floor takes advantage of the benign Mexican climate. A significant amount of external space has been created by drawing the weather envelope towards the centre of the building. This creative approach allows art lovers to experience the sculpture on terraces within the footprint of the building and effectively incorporates the outdoor environment into the visitors’ experience as they travel through the museum." Pavlina Akritas, Lead Lighting Designer, Arup
Arup was also responsible for providing strategic engineering advice to Chipperfield for the museum’s engineering systems, including a full assessment of the imposed art loading, wind and seismic design criteria.
During the early stages of the project, the main challenge for Arup’s structural, mechanical, electrical and public health engineering design team was to support the requirements for an open plan, flexible gallery space on the upper two floors of the museum. The team produced a solution that combines a clear spanning steel roof structure with services integrated into the windowless perimeter walls. This combination enables the gallery floor and wall layouts to remain interdependent of structure and services. The result is a stunning column-free flexible space that can be re-configured in order to meet exhibition requirements.
"One of the greatest and most rewarding aspects about the engineering design was the extensive exploration to help support the emerging architectural vision." Nigel Tonks, Director, Arup
Arup’s collaborative and holistic design approach supported DCA and helped to crystallise the architect’s vision during the early stages of design.