Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos GmbH

Madinat Al Zahara Museum

Madinat Al Zahara Museum
© Fernando Alda

MADINAT AL ZAHARA MUSEUM

Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos

ARCHITECTS
Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos

PHOTOGRAPHS
Fernando Alda, Roland Halbe

MECHANICAL ENGINEER
Geasyt, S.A.

COLLABORATORS
Carlos Ballesteros, Pedro Quero, Juan Carlos Redondo

TECHNICAL ARCHITECT
Miguel Mesas Izquierdo

MODELS
Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos, Juan de Dios Hernández, Jesús Rey

ARCHITECT IN CHARGE
Fuensanta Nieto, Enrique Sobejano

PROJECT ARCHITECT
Miguel Ubarrechena

YEAR
2009

LOCATION
Spain

CATEGORY
Museum

The remains of the old Hispano-Muslim city suggested a dialogue with those who a thousand years earlier had conceived and built it, but also with the patient work of archaeologists and with the surrounding agrarian landscape, to which the geometry of the ruins gave an unexpected abstract quality. The terrain of the archaeological site for the museum stirred, however, contrasting feelings.

Madinat Al Zahara Museum
© Fernando Alda
Madinat Al Zahara Museum
© Fernando Alda

On the one hand, the yearning for a remote past yet to be discovered pervaded the landscape stretching all the way to the mountain ranges of Córdoba.

On the other hand, the disorderly growth of new constructions lurked over the old city. Our first reaction when we arrived at the place would determine, from the very first moment, our proposal: we should not build in that landscape.

Madinat Al Zahara Museum
© Roland Halbe
Madinat Al Zahara Museum
© Fernando Alda

In such a vast extension of land, still waiting to be excavated, we decided to act as an archaeologist would: not building the new structure, but finding it below ground, as if the passage of time had been concealed all this time.

In this way the project unveils the floor plan of an underground museum which articulates its spaces around a sequence of solid and void spaces, covered areas and courtyards that guide visitors along their itinerary.

Madinat Al Zahara Museum
© Fernando Alda
Madinat Al Zahara Museum
© Fernando Alda

The main lobby leads to a large courtyard with a squared floor plan that, as a cloister, organizes around it the main public spaces: assembly hall, cafeteria, store, library and exhibition halls.

A deep, elongated courtyard articulates the private use areas: administration, conservation workshops and research areas. A last courtyard is the extension towards the exterior of the museum exhibition areas.

Madinat Al Zahara Museum
© Roland Halbe
Madinat Al Zahara Museum
© Roland Halbe

The storage areas, conceived as large toplit spaces, blend with the public areas of exhibition and dissemination.

The conception of the project entails the possibility of an expansion, making it possible to add pavilions as if they were new excavations.

Madinat Al Zahara Museum
© Roland Halbe

The new museum establishes almost imperceptibly a permanent dialogue with the architecture and the landscape of the old Arab medina. The double square floor plan of the museum is homothetic to that of the city, the gardens evoke the abandoned geometry of an excavation, the concrete walls and cor-ten steel roofs reflect with the white and the red the colors of the stuccoed walls of the Caliphal city. Light, shadow, texture and matter extract the perceptive richness of the archaeological ruins.

Madinat Al Zahara Museum
© Fernando Alda

The Madinat al-Zahra Museum appears silently in the landscape, as if it had been found underground, just like it will keep on happening over the course of the years with the old city of the Umayyad Caliphs.


Madinat Al Zahara Museum
Sections
Madinat Al Zahara Museum
Sections


Madinat Al Zahara Museum
Site Plan
Madinat Al Zahara Museum
Plan 01
Madinat Al Zahara Museum
Basement Plan
Madinat Al Zahara Museum
Roof Plan

Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos GmbH
T +49 30 69538680 F +49 30 695386898
Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos GmbH
Schlesische Str. 26, 10997 Berlin, Germany