OBJECTIVE

The distinction between an embedded portion and three overhanging volumes pursues a subtle balance between the necessary discretion of the built volume and the presence of remarkable features that pinpoint the gallery on the site. The gallery spaces are organised in a single level of exhibition rooms, which were arranged on a sequence defined by strict collaboration with the curators on Inhotim. The exhibition area is divided in three main groups by transitional spaces that mediate nature and artwork. The diversity of the exhibition areas is guaranteed by interchanging introspection and openness to the site; in such way that sights to the woods and the internal patio, vast and intimate rooms, natural and artificial lighting take turns. The investigation of textures is reflected on the narrow material palette and the handmade bricks on the external surfaces, resounding the shades of density and different qualities of the sunlight filtered through the foliage.

CONTEXT

The Maxita Yano – Claudia Andujar Gallery, part of Inhotim Contemporary Art Museum, was designed to shelter the works of the swiss-born Brazilian photographer Claudia Andujar. The building is located on a densely wooded slope, accessed by trails amongst the vegetation. The topography defines a small promontory that reveals the surrounding landscape. This location informed the design strategy concerning its placement: the higher portion of the site was redesigned to receive the embedded volume, granting it an unobtrusive aspect. Contrarily, the rest of the building was divided in three blocks projecting over the slope, each one oriented toward different sight of the woods.

PERFORMANCE

The gallery was named ‘Maxita Yano’ – meaning ‘clay house’ in Yanomami language - by the native americans that attended the opening ceremony. Its design is a statement, through its materiality, on the nature of its spaces and lighting, searching for a widened perception of potential relationships among art, architecture, nature and landscape, what is an specific feature of the Institute that commissioned both the building and the artwork. The interior organization of the exhibition rooms alternated with open spaces fits entirely to the curatorial expectations, resulting in one of the most complete integrations reached at the institute among architectural design, curatorship, expography and landscape design. In other words, its architecture is a responsive approach to both the site and the artwork that it is dedicated to: the delicate and potent photographic work by Andujar on the world and life of the Yanomami people. It is, above all, a research on more subtle and different relations between human artefacts and nature, both in a more immediate comprehension of nature - the site, the woods, the climate - and in an in-depth search that relates to its materiality and time, in a phenomenological approach.