51N4E

NCCA National Centre for Contemporary Arts . Moscow

The rebirth of a museum is a rare occurrence, even as the public’s demand keeps growing exponentially.

It has the unique potential to redefine the perception of a neighborhood, a city and even a culture at large. What is proposed here is no less than a constantly unfolding landmark for the city of Moscow, a platform for excellence and exchange. The new NCCA needs to develop a twofold discursivity; with the city and with the public. The spatial set up of the museum can enhance the ways how the museum can perform this discursivity. We see it as a place where city, collection and public can be interwoven; a shared space where artists and public can be active participants and not just passive exposants or consumers. In that sense, the centre is made to generate spaces for negotiation rather than mere representation. It is set up as the assembly of three strategic elements: Display, District and Device. The new NCCA claims its place in the urban arena of the former air field by presenting itself as a giant display, black during day and lit up at night. It will function as a community-building tool fostering a sense of both grandeur through its scale, and intimacy through its blackboard-like quality. The centre seeks an osmotic relationship with its direct urban context; the mall and the park. The ground floor slopes up towards the shopping centre and is developed as a multi-level district. As such, the centre develops its own context as a contemporary art district with different addresses, the NCCA being one of them. Conceived as a selection of spatial types that are re-appropriated and put in sequence, the new NCCA offers flexibility without an open plan. The centre is a device, allowing conditions of difference, of alternatives, of the unexpected.