Andalucia's Museum of Memory

Petr Šmídek, 2011

We would like to make “the most beautiful building” for the Museo de al Memoria de Andalucía (Andalusia’s Museum of Memory) in Granada. The MA. A museum that wishes to transmit the entire history of Andalusia. As early as Roman times, Strabo described the inhabitants of Andalusia as “the most cultivated of the Iberians, who have laws in verse.”
Our project for the MA is a building in line with the Central Headquarters of the CAJA GRANADA Savings Bank that we finished in 2001. We propose a podium building measuring 60×120 m and rising three stories, so that its upper floor coincides with the podium of the main CAJA GRANADA building. And its façade as well. Everything is arranged around a central courtyard, in elliptical form in which circular ramps rise, connecting the three levels and creating a very interesting spatial tension. The dimensions of the elliptical courtyard have been taken from the courtyard of the Palace of Charles the V in the Alhambra.
And to crown it all, as if it were a Gate to the City, a strong vertical piece emerges, the same height and width as the main building of the CAJA GRANADA. It thus appears before the highway that circles Granada as a screen-façade that sends messages over the large plasma screens that will cover it entirely. Like Piccadilly Circus in London or Times Square in New York.
And to finish the entire operation, a large horizontal platform all the way to the River, the MA open FIELD that will serve as a public space in that new area of the city of Granada.
The new building, silent in its forms, is resounding in its elements to communicate the messages of the new millennium in which we are already immersed.