Design Awards 2016: Best Building Site – Museum of Image and Sound
![Buildings and the wave mosaics on the Copacabana Beach promenade](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/LbqkGw9ebxVEF8kQBfLAPm-415-80.jpg)
Due to open this year, the new Museum of Image and Sound in Rio de Janeiro – the recipient of the 2016 Wallpaper* Design Award for Best Building Site – will house a vast archive of photographs, film, documents and sound recordings that tell the story of the city’s cultural, artistic and social life since it was founded in 1565.
Designed by New York firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), the 9,800 sq m, eight-storey building (two underground), in concrete, steel and glass, is partly funded by the government and the Roberto Marinho Foundation, and it takes its cue from Brazilian artist and landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx’s famous undulating wave mosaics, designed in 1971, that run along the boardwalk of Avenída Atlântica at Copacabana Beach.
‘The building is conceived as an extension of the Avenída,’ says Elizabeth Diller of DS+R. ‘The beach is Rio’s great democratic site. It unifies the city. It’s a place of socialising around natural resources, a place of spectacle. We have taken the mosaic pavement and stretched the boulevard up through the building.’
The building’s front façade features a zigzagging set of stairs, which, as visitors ascend, plays with the view, teasing with glimpses of the city. ‘The postcard view of the beach and surrounding mountains is the museum’s most potent physical holding,’ says Diller. ‘The view is precisely curated through hundreds of tubes that orient towards different locations, producing a lenticular effect. The view is turned on and off and dispensed slowly, in small doses, as one moves up the stairs, from gallery to gallery.’
The foyer will feature a digital version of Rio’s distinctive street newsstands, showing the events and exhibitions on that day, while the first floor will celebrate the city’s party spirit, including a series of galleries dedicated to Carnival. Going up through the floors, the museum will also cover Rio’s musical history, television (especially Brazil’s infamous telenovela soap operas) and the Brazilian bombshell herself, Carmen Miranda. Finally, it will open up on to a rooftop terrace, with views out to sea and down to Marx’s boardwalk. At night, the building will take on a different quality, with the rooftop playing host to a bar, restaurant and outdoor cinema, while a basement nightclub will attempt to recreate the rowdy baile parties of the favelas.
Diller is hoping the museum will reflect the city’s democratic mix. ‘Rio is a gorgeous setting ringed by favelas, producing a super-juxtaposition of haves and have-nots,’ she says. ‘I wanted to help reconcile this polarity.’
As originally featured in the February 2016 issue of Wallpaper* (W*203)
See the Design Awards 2016 in full – including our extra-special Judges’ Awards - here
INFORMATION
Photography: Peixe Voador Produções
Wallpaper* Newsletter + Free Download
For a free digital copy of August Wallpaper*, celebrating Creative America, sign up today to receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories
-
Feel at home at Auberge, Château La Coste's new inn for culture lovers
Auberge La Coste sits at the heart of the art-filled estate, minutes away from the joyful town of Aix-en-Provence
By Harriet Thorpe Published
-
This Nova Lima apartment is a Brazilian family oasis with striking Minas Gerais views
A Nova Lima apartment designed by Jacobsen Arquitetura celebrates its long, natural Minas Gerais vistas
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Commune’s sustainable personal care products look ‘quite unlike anything else’
Commune’s Somerset-made products stand out in the sustainable skincare crowd. Madeleine Rothery speaks with the brand’s co-founders Kate Neal and Rémi Paringaux
By Madeleine Rothery Published
-
This Nova Lima apartment is a Brazilian family oasis with striking Minas Gerais views
A Nova Lima apartment designed by Jacobsen Arquitetura celebrates its long, natural Minas Gerais vistas
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Valencia House by Padovani Arquitetos cuts a striking figure in the Brazilian landscape
Valencia House is a sprawling new holiday retreat in the hills outside São Paulo that mixes the timeless forms of Brazilian modernism with expansive guest facilities
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
This contemporary Brazilian home lies low and takes in its countryside context
A Brazilian home by practice Jacobsen Arquitetura, MS Residence unites nature and contemporary architecture outside São Paulo
By Léa Teuscher Published
-
Niemeyer’s modernism celebrated in Oscar Ibirapuera, an example of 21st-century São Paulo living
Perkins&Will completes Oscar Ibirapuera, next to Niemeyer’s modernist landmark park in São Paulo, Brazil
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Canopy House in Brazil is designed so ‘you can always hear the birds’
Canopy House is raised on concrete columns to offer treetop views of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest; a holiday home by Studio MK27 that is not only open plan, but open to the elements
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
The Brazilian Forest House injects art into a modernist-inspired, contemporary design
The Brazilian Forest House, designed in upstate São Paulo by FGMF, brings together nature and art
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Marcio Kogan’s Studio MK27 celebrated in this new monograph from Rizzoli
‘The Architecture of Studio MK27. Lights, camera, action’ is a richly illustrated journey through the evolution of this famed Brazilian architecture studio
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
Brazil’s Casa Subtração contrasts dramatic concrete brutalism with openness
Casa Subtração by FGMF is defined by brutalist concrete and sharp angles that contrast with the green Brazilian landscape
By Ellie Stathaki Published