BEACON (Contemporary Art Museum & Youth Hostel)

University of Moratuwa (UoM), Faculty of Architecture, Department of Architecture, Moratuwa

Project idea

Contemporary Art Museum is a part of a development vision that is to be implemented in the Nugegoda Triangle. (city centre) in Sri Lanka. This would be a new collaboration of public spaces, technology and architecture to create a landmark acting as an icon of the contemporary and future society. Further, it provides a focal point/ landmark for artists in Sri Lanka, while providing recreational functions for the general public and experimentation spaces for the contemporary arts with technology.

Exploring the “Art of Construction”
Building as a contemporary art
Land art - granting an iconic building to Nugegoda within the city centre and analysed as 3rd need of the city)

Why recreation? entertaining, recreational functions link people with each other and avoid physical and mental strain with Social sustainability.
Grand entrance to the city centre Variable spaces to experience Daytime use as a public space with public activities, festivals, art exhibitions, etc. Evening and night time with digital art museum exhibitions and media facade performances a vitual peak into the future of arts

So, the beacon is also an architectural expression of contemporary art, trying its best to fit into contemporary nature.

Project description

The contextual studies identified few main problems here.

Firstly, the city has a rich commercial, educational and service belt and behind that, there is a dense residential context as well. But there is no proper medium to interconnect these two.

Secondly, the city caters to a huge variety of users. Also, the number of users is quite high. But there is a lack of public or recreational spaces for all these users to interact. They just come here, get exhausted from their tasks and go back. It is very introverted.

Thirdly, even though there are some recreational pockets in the city, they are not well defined or interlinked. So, they can’t attract people to their full potential.

Fourthly, I also identified that, even though the city is popular for its services like shopping, education and transportation facilities, the city doesn’t have any monumental and attractive spaces or elements in its urban fabric.

So, a recreational space would come as the most ideal solution for the city centre. Now, this particular space should satisfy both building level requirements as well as urban level requirements. That means it has to fulfil not just recreation, but some other basic functions lacking in Nugegoda.

Art is an interesting mode of recreation that everyone likes. Here also it can be used in multiple disciplines to attract people. Especially the trending arts can allure young crowd who are coming here for education.
Addressed this set of contextual issues and give an architectural solution to that. That’s where the beacon comes into play.

Coming to the placement of the building, as shown here, the beacon visually connects with the surrounding buildings and places

Urban level

• The Contemporary art museum intends to retrofit Nugegoda’s generic functional layers by defining a recreational intersection of the city’s public spaces, on the contrary to the city’s busy, exhausted facet with the involvement of prolific technology and architecture. It establishes a ceremonial entrance to the city as well as its abstract morphology defines it as a timeless urban landmark within the city centre.

Building level

• Exploring the “art of construction” by designing the building as a contemporary artwork via sophisticated building systems, construction details and material palettes.
• Placement of the Museum on a focal point that visually interacts with the surrounding of the city as a combination of viewing platforms and involving techniques such as the multi-media façade as modes of communication.

Seasonal events all-year-long January - December (All festivals) facade lights up with themed digital artwork. Day - 9am to 6pm (weekdays- galleries, recreational functions, food festivals, temporary functions) 6pm to 12pm (street functions, night urban park)

Youth hostel (underneath the platform) Youth hostel is also a part of this Contemporary Art Museum. It empowers artistic commune (local and foreign artists) who wants to gather and collaborate with each other.
The project proposes a combined solution for the prevailing issues of the context and the issues of inadequate facilities for the contemporary art industry of Sri Lanka. Rooftop acts as an urban garden platform, a stage, an open-air auditorium to watch digital art on the media façade

Technical information

To accommodate both recreational and art empowerment functions, the scheme comes in two wings- the museum and the youth hostel. As you can see here, they are interconnected by this landscape platform which is also an outdoor stage


• Media façade of the museum

its skin is a mega-media facade that can display art and events to the whole city. So that is the most eye-catching feature of the project both in building scale and urban scale.
Designed Three main customized façade panels (All these three panels have a climatic resistant high definition transparent LED film overlaid as a façade display

Adaptive permeable skin – Weather sensitive mechanical louvers for improved light and ventilation gain

Impermeable skin – Solid looking insulated opaque panel of PVC roofing and ceiling

Light Permeable skin – UV protected tinted double glazed panels for natural lighting

• Materials

High-performance synthetic materials are employed in the construction to last longer with no effluents and the ability to reuse and recycle.
Nano coated facades help to low maintenances
Youth hostel façade mesh act as a heat and dust barrier following with the same language of the museum
Museum facades from white color to maintain high albedo level for the comfort and energy

• Energy usage

Fenestration, openings, and permeability of the building skin encourage natural light and ventilation to create proper working conditions with lesser energy consumed.
Orientation of the building in this way helps to show to all parts of the city equally (not just to the main road) and can get natural light and ventilation to reduce electricity wastage
Recreational functions to generate electricity (Bicycle rides on the youth hostel roof garden) arts with media façade.


• Spatial interventions

One of the specialties in the space is that its adaptability. So, if you want to change the layout of the place for a different event, you can simply use this adaptive furniture. Specially detailed temporary cupboards can store them and use whenever you want. also, from the outside it functions as a high-definition digital screen, that displays various arts and related segments. The staircase here is colored with ARGB ambient lighting and it symbolizes a rainbow linking the water and ground. The entrance floor is the first floor and from there we can see the whole museum. All floors are visually connected. Big volume spaces with steel trusses.

Black box gallery is a miniature suspended cantilevered enclosed platform for virtual gallery arts, exterior enclosure is overlaid with UHD pixel pitch OLED displays to enhance its futuristic sense. Interior ambiance and media activity imply a “digital universe”

Documentation

Show PDF 1Show PDF 2Show PDF 3Show PDF 4Show PDF 5Show PDF 6Show PDF 7Show PDF 8Show PDF 9