Valdivieso . Rojas Böttner . PARABASE

MUSEO REGIONAL . RAPA NUI

Santiago Valdivieso Arquitectos Asociados @stgo_valdivieso . Pablo Rojas Böttner @rojasbottner . PARABASE @parabase.eu . renders: © Leonardo Liñan @leonina_

What does it mean to design and build, today in 2024, a Regional Museum in Rapa Nui? As non-insular architects, we ask whether it is possible to work with the symbols and forms of Rapa Nui culture without distorting them. Wouldn’t it be more honest to work with a deep respect for the island itself?

Rather than designing a building, we propose designing a living landscape. A dispersed system of lightweight, prefabricated and reversible structures surrounds a circular botanical garden at its core. This strategy minimizes the environmental footprint while aligning with traditional scales and typologies of the island.

The architecture is light, elevated, and temporal—introduced as a respectful guest. Volcanic materials from the site are reused, and global technologies from the continent are subtly integrated to protect and generate new culture. The design rejects static hierarchies, embracing a rhizomatic configuration that spreads organically, enabling flexibility, growth, and resilience.

The museum is conceived as an open system, where collections and ceremonies flow between interiors and exteriors, between nature and culture, forming immersive and evolving experiences. It is not a static object, but a cultural infrastructure in motion, reflecting past, present, and future in continuous transformation.

In this remote island territory, where architecture must arrive by sea, we choose lightness as our central criterion. Everything that arrives can also leave—leaving nothing but landscape behind.
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