Children’s Museum, “Papalote Verde Monterrey”

Underground Museum that integrates art, construction and sustainable technologies with an interactive and dynamic approach. Scheduled to open in winter 2014, the Children’s Museum “Papalote Verde Monterrey” is expected to become one of Mexico’s first LEED Platinum certificates.

In this project the concept of “museum” is addressed from an entirely new perspective, as the building itself becomes part of the learning experience. The flowing geometry of the building, jointly with its demonstrative technologies, teaches visitors to incorporate passive and active systems to the construction, thus allowing museography and architecture to merge.

Usually a museum is conceived as a series of rooms that explain a topic and follow a rigid sequence. In this case, the topic is being explored throughout the museum as a whole and understood within diverse contexts, allowing the visitor to create his own tour.

The project explores two main strategies; one, the restoration of two existing buildings on site and two, the underground construction of the new building. The latter allows for a third strategy to be emerge, the landscape proposal, allowing the new construction to blend into the existing morphology of the site. The restoration of the two existing buildings allows us to introduce a new program to an under-used space and improve its current condition. The underground strategy reduces the impact on the site and helps maintain the park's horizontal landscape.