Sao Paulo practice [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] have won a competition to design a new science museum in Campinas, Brazil.

Called Exploratory Science Museum, part of the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], their proposal beat over 100 other entries in the international public competition.

Asked to incorporate the site’s existing buildings, the architects
have conceived a large rectangular structure clad in perforated
aluminium plates.

The geometric holes are designed to diffuse light and control the internal climate.

A ramp under the large structural cantilever leads to the entrance.

The main level comprises a shop, library, café, observatory and
temporary and permanent exhibition spaces, while the lower level holds
the multimedia exhibition, auditorium and science ateliers.

The building will be constructed of largely reflective materials, including glass, steel and aluminium.

Here’s some more information from CHN Arquitetos:
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Being Science the institution and main purpose of this project it
becomes possible to reveal in an exceptional manner the relation
between Man and Nature. And if in that relation science is concerned
with understanding the existing, architecture deals with what still
does not exist: it presents itself as an opportunity of expression of
Man and his creation, originating a phenomenon of its own. Upon this,
two absolute conditions are presented: the singular location where the
project will be placed and the universal institution to be manifested.

A museum as a phenomenon, a phenomenon as landscape.
First, the place reveals us the indispensable need for the
relationship between the new museum and the landscape to give rise to
an event of territorial scale. The new museum should become a landmark
on the horizon as a geographical fact. A museum that observes and is
observed. A building that reveals itself and originates a new relation
between Man and Nature, Architecture and Landscape.

Second, it is crucial that the new museum should, above all, enhance
the value of the institution through its architecture, be the Science
in itself. The new building should reveal this aspect, be unique and
not just a common structure.
Simultaneously the new building seeks through its design, the primal
metaphor between the infinite dimension of the universe and the human
property of understanding reality through Science: intervention and
landscape, vertical and horizontal, interior and exterior, light and
shadow, cosmos and individual. Architecture as a determined act of
human manifestation, a scientific instrument of learning and identity
for the revelation of Science. Thus, it is unquestionable and
determining the synthesis of the significance of the museum and its
action in the territory.

SCHEME / MASTERPLAN
The project for the Museum of Science has in its essence the
possibility of allowing a multitude of impressions and comprehensions
from numerous scales and distances. The relation between the users and
the new museum takes place through a process of progressively discovery
and knowledge. It is this experience that generates a continuous and
inseparable relationship between exterior and interior.
Since the beginning the sensations and impressions caused should be
able to lead a stimulated visitor inside the museum, seeking to turn
his intuition in understanding.
The experience of the exterior of the building should lead to a
sequence of what was apprehended outside and lead to an interior even
more inspiring, keeping the visitor always connected to the experience
that brought him there.
The masterplan strategy seeks the predominance of the landscape to
which the museum adds itself to, contemplating three different scales:
the surroundings, the campus and the user. The project configures
itself as a north-south axis horizontal volume that accommodates itself
in the topography and which highest level coincides with the existing
square level, keeping intact and unleashing the seizure of the
panoramic view in all its extension; this same volume becomes vertical
and ends up marking the place, inaugurating a new event in the current
context of the Campus of UNICAMP and the Metropolitan Region of
Campinas, visible in an extensive range formed by cities, roads and
equipments. However, only by the knowledge of its internal space is
that the relationship between horizontal and vertical element is fully
known and understood.

The new museum is contained in a single band where the program is
distributed in different spaces and moments. The arrival happens
through a large structural cantilever that leads visitors to the
entrance square/ramp for reception and group accommodation before the
main entrance to the museum: a place characterized by multiple uses and
the capacity to accommodate a large number of users, by its
configuration and dimensions.
From the external and internal reception areas, public accesses are
configured in two levels. On the main level, which keeps the user
always visually in contact with the outside, are all uses of open
access (Shop, Library, Sunset Coffee and Observatory) and, after the
controlling of paid area, the Temporary and Permanent Exhibition
spaces. By this level the new museum also connects to the existing
buildings that are part of the requested program. On the lower level is
reached the Multimedia Exhibition, Auditorium and Science Ateliers. In
the southern part of the site is located in the technical access
directly connected to the Receiving and Storage docks, as well as
controlled technical access to exhibition rooms.

Each of the spaces and activities of the program is endowed with
characteristics that identify them. Multimedia Exhibition, prepared to
house NanoAventura, is configured as a volume that perforates the
museum and makes itself present throughout the whole internal
circulation. Furthermore, it is accessed by a path that refers to the
museum’s connection to the land, while the Observatory, located at the
top of the vertical volume, refers directly to the Space dimension. The
existing buildings (Space-Time Square and Oficina-Desafio) are
incorporated through its uses and connections to the reception area of
the new building, forming an upper level museology open space.
The future expansions will be located in volumes in the western
portion of the site in a lower level, not interfering in the main
volumes, and able to be accessed separately. The management of open
spaces is done by limiting controls areas of activities that can be
opened independently: the top level and lower level at the Museum,
Oficina- Desafio and outdoor areas, always ensuring the complete safety
of the building.

MUSEOLOGY / CIRCULATION
The museum building is offered as a powerful teaching experience of
the institution, seeking the essential interaction between architecture
and museology content: a synthesis of both, the museum is a building
and should expose itself as such, just like science takes the knowledge
through experience of reality. The freedom of the various possible
displacements provides a diversity of spatialities and sensations,
setting up a process of knowledge construction through the emotions
that the visitor is experiencing along his movement through space.
Teaching through the architecture of the museum and transforming it as
a teaching tool, making it a fundamental stimulus for the visitor to
ask himself about the world.

A ’scientific’ itinerary concept design begins even before the arrival
at the Museum when, from the first contact with the building in the
site, a reading (a priori) occurs through the sensations caused by its
external characteristics, stimulating questions and queries about its
nature and becoming a partial understanding as you approach the
building. Secondly, the route through the Museum´s interior is revealed
as a clarification and understanding (knowledge) of what had been
observed before. A path of progressive and singular emotions capable of
stimulating the perception of the user as it experiences and interacts
with the Museum. Discovering the nature and form of the building by the
transition between inner and outer space of the entrance square, the
access to the horizontal volume of the museum is involved by the
controlled and dynamic lighting of the closures, the immersive space of
the temporary exhibition and culminating in the monumental vertical
space dedicated to the permanent exhibition, the visitor turns out to
have a total learning of the Museum.
Finally, the moment of departure sets the last observation (a
posteriori) about the institution: a different view of the outside from
a distinct and cognitive repertory, now endowed with a real knowledge
about the object and able to provide a definitive vision of your visit
considering that this will be different for each new occasion. As
Science itself, a journey that is defined by moments of search and
instants of intense discovery.

SUSTAINABILITY / ENVIRONMENTAL COMFORT
Energetic Efficiency: the comfort conditions for the users are
guaranteed by natural climatization during most of the time by the fact
that the building in its whole can be controlled manually, saving
energy for both ventilation (air-conditioning used only when necessary
to compensate external conditions or circumstances for specific
exhibitions) as well as for lighting. The project will also reduce
interference on the ground and enables the occupation of the rest of
the area with small or large vegetation.
Facade: the aluminum plates that enclose the building functioning as
brises, play a crucial thermal protection in the climatic conditions to
which is exposed the museum.
The surfaces are the key elements that ensure an appropriate level
of comfort within the building and the flexibility of control in the
winter and summer. The predominance of the color white in almost all
exterior contributes to the thermal performance to reflect the maximum
of radiation effect and thus the transmission of heat into the building.

LANGUAGE / MATERIALITY
Through its masterplan design and form, combined to the matter of
which is constituted, the museum brings together Science and spatial
and sensory expressions. Using predominantly reflective materials
(steel, aluminum and glass) the building becomes, first, a point of
light, a reflection not very definite by distance, but that reveals
itself as approached. A diffuse glow that refers to an event in
perpetual motion as the light of day and night changes. The
potentialization of a phenomenon and a stimulus for any person to ask
about the world that surrounds you.

The surface of the facade is created from the idea of infinity: a
reference to the essence of its form, recognizable from its
cosmological scale to its most minimal. We can find similarities in
everything that constitutes the universe around us and the building
seeks to transmit them. Likewise, being a Science Museum, the
aprehention of this information also occurs in a progressive way, from
its conception to its understanding.

We start with a scientific knowledge of man over nature: the
infinite in nature is recognized and subsequently parameterized by man
through mathematical and geometric concepts. This scientific knowledge
leads to a second type of infinity, synthesized in the concept of
fractal: infinitesimal rate created by man from his interpretation of
the characteristics of the environment that surrounds him, new notions
of self-similarity and infinite complexity, capable to understand the
nature and its unlimited scales. Our design is a third view over this
concept creating a human interpretation of a natural event through the
materiality and texture of the building.

From an initial mathematical scheme a perforating “code” is drawn
and applied to the surfaces. Then a pattern of 10 pieces is created,
following industrial dimensions and varying its design of aperture /
transparency in accordance to the quantity / size of the perforations
adopted. The layout of these pieces on the facades of the building
corresponds to the internal uses, being more dense or diffuse according
to the luminance control required for the activities. The repetition
and mixture of these pieces is capable of generating an infinite and
parameterized design that will be recognized in the extent that the
user observes the building from the most distant points to the interior
ones, discovering it at each moment.

To make that the matter which constitutes the Museum may reveal the
totality of its existence and turns out to have a proper meaning
through human language. An event that synthesizes in itself form and
function: symbol, design, climatic shield, phenomenon, didactic
element, parameter of the infinite. A Museum capable of stimulating the
imagination and knowledge of the individual, allowing each one to
create your own story from an experience, and keep in your
consciousness the magnificent relation between Man, Nature and Science.

PROJECT DATA
Project Name: Exploratory Science Museum of Unicamp (First Prize – International Public Competition)
Location: Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil
Year: 2009
Site Area: 28.968m²
Construction Area: 5.370m²
PROJECT TEAM
Authors:
Daniel Corsi
Dani Hirano
Reinaldo Nishimura
Colaborators:
André Biselli Sauaia
Laura Paes Barreto Pardo
Team:
Andrea Key Abe, Jenniffer A. dos Reis, Lidia Neves Martello, Amanda Nascimento Higuti, Tatiana Hummel
Consultants:
Mônica Marcondes, Boris Villen, Bruno Sinopoli, Inês Coutinho, Ricardo
Zulques, Eduardo Knothe, Raul José de Almeida, Ilan Gotlieb
Model:
Leon Richard Benkler

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Posted by Malaika Byng from dezeen.com