LOUISVILLE CHILDREN’S MUSEUM

Kentucky, USA

To begin a project is to first and foremost develop research. In this case there two essential questions, what is a children's museum, and how to develop a master plan integrating all the dreams of the neighborhood in this promising and rising modern city of Louisville, Kentucky. 

There are two elements fundamental to the make up of this site: the street of West Broadway, and the Main Public Library. This intervention will enrich the, already existing, doorway to this important public space. The proposed site evokes an intelligent diagonal connecting the Museum to the  HIGH TECH INCUBATOR, a park located in the center. At an urban level, the project originates from this diagonal tension in which we believe will construct a new and real "heart" to attend. This is the concept underlined in the proposed shape of the park.  

The second question addresses the program and the shape, and how to play with these two forces applied to the learning of children. We propose the Museum like figurative unity, like the vibration that always constructs a corner in the American city. The proposed building expresses itself as architecture that believes in tectonics, in essence, like a mass that dances.

The entry to the Museum deploys an unexpected landscape that reveals something magic: a very delicate light from the roof. The light and the shape conform to the interior of a strong, massive tree. The rest plays to a beautiful simplicity. The floors are open to all manners of conceiving contemporary expositions, from objects, interactive projections, to furniture; the potential is for a museum that doesn't minimize the intellectual capacity of a child, and based in experience and interactivity, also, forms a museum for the eternal child. From a vertical cross-section, the interactive program is proposed as a "stairway" from Arts to Sciences, to Techniques, with the World, in all its complexity, at the center. The experience is all linked by a tunnel: the park contributing another vibration to this underground space, that will be a center for the new, young, and future creators that have grown in the city of Louisville. 

All Images © Jesus Torres Garcia Architects

TEAM : JESÚS TORRES GARCÍA · ARCHITECTS

JESUS TORRES GARCÍA · Architect

MARTIN LUETHY · Architect

NEREIDA DE LA MATA · Architect

TERESA GARCÍA-HERRERA · Architect

LOU VERNEJOUL · Student

> via jesustorres.net