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The CAM (Contemporary Art Center) expansion and renovation plan designed by Kengo Kuma Architects will open to the public in September this year. The scheme modernizes and expands the exhibition space for contemporary art at Lisbon’s Gulbenkian Foundation, which is housed in Leslie Martin’s 1983 stepped concrete building . But Kuma also reconfigured the CAM within the Gulbenkian landscape, opening it up to a new southern garden and establishing connections with the surrounding streets and neighborhood.
The Gulbenkian Foundation was established in 1969 and is located north of Lisbon’s historic city center. This modernist complex houses a museum, art library and offices and is designed around a strong visual connection between interiors and gardens. The CAM arrives later and acts as a bookend to the southern part of the site: Martin’s Brutalist building reaches up from the park and ornamental lake, then backs to the south.
When the Foundation recently acquired the extensive southern gardens directly behind the CAM (which had previously been privately owned and walled), a competition was launched to reimagine the museum and address its role as a space between the historic north campus and the new campus Barrier Dilemma. Expansion to the south. Kengo Kuma’s winning proposal proposes a massive curved roof extending along the entire south facade to soften the north campus’s stark relationship with the new gardens, creating a sheltered space where CAM visitors can experience the expanded landscape below.
The wide roof is more than just a gesture, though.It’s a modern take on traditional Japanese tradition Enchuan– A narrow, covered balcony that serves as a transition space between interior and exterior. As CAM nears completion, Kengo Kuma and Rita Topa, a partner at Kengo Kuma & Associates and lead architect on the project, hosted a hard hat preview of the museum.Kengo Kuma told me that he has established engawas to previous projects, but “this one is probably the biggest.” Then he paused and seemed to ponder the scale. “Yes, this is the biggest Enchuan”.
The building is 330 feet long and looks huge when viewed from a distance. But when walked beneath its low swoop, the new balcony has a lightness similar to that of a canvas awning. The structure is topped by a series of white ceramic tiles – a material historically favored by both Portugal and Japan, which Kuma believes reflects “the sympathy between the two countries”.
Internally, Kengo Kuma wanted the new roof structure to “create a new experience that focuses the texture of the garden” rather than simply provide a picture window frame for the future garden.This is a panoramic proposition by landscape architect Vladimir Djurovic that compares the horizontality of Japanese scroll paintings, despite their functionality Enchuan And it’s not just for aesthetics: an indentation in the roof directs rainwater into the main stream below and connects to the estate’s irrigation system. “The architecture is shaping the design of the garden, and the landscape is shaping the architecture,” said the Lebanese landscape architect, “so the relationship between the two becomes more comprehensive.”
Kengo Kuma positioned CAM’s new gallery and network of underground auxiliary spaces together. “We didn’t want to build a new building,” Kengo Kuma told me, and we decided to keep much of Martin’s original building and excavate it downwards rather than build it in the garden. “We just wanted to increase the relationship with the building.” This meant Jurovich was able to plan a large garden, carefully designed to blend in with the existing Gulbenkian landscape and build on the inherited topology of the site. “All paths are defined by existing trees,” he said, “and we are slowly converting the ornamental gardens into fully native habitats to maximize native species.”
A new pedestrian entrance leads to CAM and Gulbenkian, fundamentally changing the cultural complex’s relationship with the city. “You feel like you’re walking through a forest,” Jurovich said.The final visual effect of the walk will be sunlight reflected from the ground EnchuanPure white tiles.
Will Jennings is a London-based art and architecture writer and editor of Recessed. Director of space, arts charity Hypha Studios, and educator at University College London and the University of Greenwich.
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