The building replaces the one destroyed in 2007 by an earthquake. Its design keeps the rectangular geometry and compactness of the previous museum, with a crack containing intermediate spaces that separate the outreach areas from the research spaces, framing the views of the sky and of the vast desert landscape. The layout of the exhibition spaces is the result of an apparently contradictory hybridization of the labyrinthine and spiral sequences typical of pre-Columbian architecture and the fluid, continuous transparency of contemporary buildings. In response to the harsh climate of the place, the building incorporates a skylight conceived as an environmental correction device that deals with the demanding bioclimatic conditions of the desert while serving to define the silhouette of the museum, built entirely in reddish pozzolan cement. The external geometry reinterprets the features of the Paracas textiles, one of the highest technological and artistic expressions of this ancestral Peruvian culture…[+][+][+]