The design of the new building of the Barranquilla Museum of Modern Art (MAMBA) starts out essentially from two facts: on one hand, the city is and will be the gate of entry for migrant international communities to Colombia, which has become an important center for creative production and innovation in fields like art, design, and architecture; on the other hand, its geographic features and strategic position in the development of the country turn Barranquilla into an emerging city, which involves the need to improve its urban infrastructures through sustainability and innovation.

The project stems from the idea that the interrelation of city and culture generates active artistic spaces that enrich the community. Therefore, the scheme proposes an open architecture conducive to a change of mindset, going from art as an element exclusive to art as an element to be enjoyed by all, and does so by generating a series of public spaces that lets visitors embrace the museum as a part of the city, a place that gathers recreation, art, and culture and lets architecture interact with the community.

The Barranquilla Modern Art Museum is projected as a building that participates in the configuration of Parque Cultural del Caribe and its urban transformation through a dynamic cultural axis of the city. The opening of the building to the public space allows the approach to the cultural heritage of the country and the enjoyment for all the citizens, additionally to the connection with the neighboring Museum of the Caribbean – built by the same studio in 2009 – through a plaza that will turn it into a great active space that invites people to embrace the place as part of the city.

The new museum is a large volume built in concrete with a green dye, measuring 20x30 meters and 27 meters in height, and is designed as a live space that users can walk through and activate in different ways. Inside it houses a large void around which all the circulations are articulated, and that connects the different exhibition spaces. The ascending itinerary starts out from the large lobby, where the ticket booths and museum shop are located, a space where visitors can contemplate Cosas del aire, a large mural by the Spanish-Colombian painter Alejandro Obregón, and that becomes the heart of the building, both in its spatial conception and in terms of museographic design...[+]