A museum proposal for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation on a spectacular site at the edge of the Barranca canyon in Guadalajara — the building lifts its galleries above a new public plaza, creating an immense cultural balcony overlooking the canyon while housing flexible exhibition spaces, a library, restaurant, and public gathering environments.
In 2005, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation invited proposals for a new museum in Guadalajara — Mexico’s second-largest city and a center of artistic and literary culture. The site selected was extraordinary: a precipice at the edge of the city’s dense urban fabric, where the ground drops some 600 meters into the vast canyon landscape known as the Barranca, extending visually as far as the eye can see. Asymptote’s response takes this vertiginous threshold as its generative condition.
Site & Urban Strategy
The museum design embraces the precipitous canyon edge, creating a spectacular urban post and immense balcony as an unparalleled spatial experience. By lifting the entire museum off the ground and elevating it 18 meters above the plaza below, the building takes advantage of the cliff edge while enveloping a new kind of urban public space beneath its sweeping form.
Program & Public Realm
A new cultural Zócalo is contained by four corner buildings that rise to support the sweeping underbelly of the museum above. This new plaza functions simultaneously as viewing platform, gateway, gathering place, urban theater, and outdoor exhibition space serving local citizens and museum visitors alike. Inclined escalator volumes provide a dramatic entrance experience while overlooking the spectacular landscape.
Gallery Spaces
The main exhibition spaces are located in large flexible volumes on two upper levels connected by bridges and balconies that overlook the lobby. Curved concrete walls and dramatic angled windows frame the canyon landscape, integrating the natural setting into the art viewing experience. The galleries accommodate works at an international scale while maintaining a continuous visual connection to the extraordinary site.
Public Amenities
The multi-storey lobby is a highly animated public domain accommodating café, museum shop, reading room, education center, and theaters — designed to be publicly accessible and separate from the ticketed gallery spaces. On the uppermost levels, a publicly accessible restaurant terrace offers panoramic views of both the architecture’s sweeping forms and the Barranca canyon beyond.
