Taller 301

New UGM Art Gallery . Maribor

Taller 301

In a time where museums ARE the exhibition themselves, Museum and Art Gallery are no longer synonyms for one another. The accurate title for this competition (The New Maribor Art Gallery) leaves no room for the symbolic or loud author signature, only for the practical: a building or place for the exhibition of art.

Museum vs. Art Gallery… a brief retrospective
One of culture’s remaining sanctuaries are art galleries. These artistic epicenters have the enormous potential to transcend their main purpose and become educational and social engines. Recent exemplary art galleries that have had a huge impact in culture and society are, curiously, industrial or historic buildings adapted and transformed to serve this purpose. We could say that we are witnessing a shift in the typological notion of art galleries. As an inevitable result of a fast and always changing world, art has become a complex and wide term that has changed through time engaging in different expressions. The new UGM should host and detonate art in all its forms, whether they are contemporary or historic.
Having a vast legacy of industrial buildings in Maribor, we identified this typology as the starting point for the design of a new UGM.

Urban and Historic Context
Limiting the crowded and chaotic old city center (east) and neighboring the orderly and rational modern development around the Pristan swimming pools (west), the new UGM sits in a key position in front of the Drava. Having to either amalgamate these two contrasting urban tissues or ignore them completely, we chose the void as the catalyst between the two.

Architectural Approach – the UGM as an industrial building
Industrial buildings in their most basic notion are comprised of: a tower or chimney, a large courtyard, and a warehouse or factory. We found that these components were compatible with the contradicting morphologies found in Lent and Pristan. The project aims to provide two separate distinctive buildings integrated into their respective context whilst containing a large and significant void. The tower would be placed next to the modern development in Pristan; whereas the warehouse, with its pitched roofs, dialogues respectfully with the historic city.

Civic Gesture
While the tower is an essential component in the typology and enables a larger open space, we wanted to acknowledge and respect the city skyline. In a simple action, the towers top floors are bent thus creating invaluable and unique scenarios:
1. Continuous and large gallery exhibition spaces with natural lighting for the top gallery floor.
2. Large sightseeing window – a periscopic view of the distinctive historical city roofscape.
3. The covered plaza: A significant civic open platform that blurs the boundaries between art and daily life. Maribor’s own public covered “turbine hall” in direct relation with the Drava!
Building Organization
The main building activities are directly connected to the central open space. The new UGM is arranged in stacked floors around a central staircase and elevators. The top two floors are a sequence of exhibition rooms (of various sizes) for small, medium or large format pieces of the UGM collection. The entrances to the creative industry center, the children’s museum, architecture center, the new UGM, catering and underground garage are separately accessed from the covered plaza. This provides clarity and simplicity in their control and separation in their operation.

Title New UGM – Art Gallery
Status Competition Submission
Awards N/A
Client Municipality of Maribor
Location Maribor, Slovenia
Area 12.000 m2
Date[s] 2010
Team Leaders Pablo Forero, Julian Restrepo
Team members Juan Carlos Cuberos, Mateo Cely, Ricardo López, Manuela Mosquera, Susana Somoza, María Buenahora.
Collaborator[s] N/A