The phenomenology of contemplative spaces, museum of the ancient Nile

The following Project was developed as a proposal for the contest by Arquideas to create a museum about Ancient Nile cultures. Gabriel Sánchez and I developed the proposal in collaboration with Brenda Moreno and Hazzel Castañeda

Inspired by the grandeur of ancient Egyptian architecture (1) the MoAN proposes a series of pure forms of a dramatic scale.

The project aims to praise the culture and human manifestation created by the Nile. The project works as an historical and site museum.

Historical precedents such as (2) the drawings by Étienne Louis Boullee inspired us to create monumental volumes where architecture serves to extol the nature.

The museum is located near the river, in the lands that once where nourished by the Nile.

Visitors are invited to experience the site from different perspectives, at ground level the concert hall serves as a landscape frame, the other volume; a truncated square pyramid evokes the grandiose Egyptian constructions.

Below ground level, visitors immerse themselves in interesting site exhibitions where light, shadow, time and silence become the object of display. Accompanied by workshops, a restaurant, a patio, curatorial rooms, a store and exhibition rooms the museum enriches the experience of visiting the traces of ancient cultures that developed due to the river’s footprint.