Archello Awards 2025: Open for Entries! Submit your best projects now.
Archello Awards 2025: Open for Entries!
Submit your best projects now.

Museum of Prehistory and Archaeology of Cantabria

Museum of Prehistory and Archaeology of Cantabria
Show Me The Project

Museum of Prehistory and Archaeology of Cantabria

What was the brief?
We offer an open space, designed in the same way that rocks are modeled, but instead of doing it with water as the Karst does, we do it with light. Cylinders of light perforate the volume, leading it towards the interior and generating multiple and suggestive views towards the exterior.

What were the key challenges?
Santander is characterized by a changing meteorology in very short periods of time. This variability of external conditions leads us to a mutable building, a reflection of its city and its surroundings, its sky and its sea.

photo_credit Show Me The Project
Show Me The Project

What materials did you choose and why?
We propose an exterior aluminum envelope to emphasize this reflectivity, but in a subtle and diffuse way, totally different from a mirror. We seek the presence of the building, not its disappearance, but in a subtle and changing way. This material allows us to perforate it in lower areas to add more light if necessary.

For the incisions and voids we propose continuous glass surfaces, depending on the orientation, with less or more solar protection.

photo_credit Show Me The Project
Show Me The Project

Team:
Architect: ZOOCO ESTUDIO
Photography: Show Me The Project

Material Used:
1. Facade cladding: Aluminium
2. Doors: Glass

Project credits

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Project data

Category
Museums