Many buildings often fall into disuse due to our cities' constant economic, social, and technological changes. The programmatic inconsistency of current times demands great versatility and adaptability from our infrastructures, increasingly leading projects to become uninhabited, and left to abandonment and decay.
Next, we present a series of 20 Latin American projects in which old warehouses, homes, prisons, mills, and markets were recovered and transformed into Cultural Centers, Museums, and Galleries.
Spaces for cultural and artistic exhibition and dissemination often carry implicit reflections on the importance of the memory of their cities, where heritage and architecture are understood as tangible manifestations of the history of each place. For this reason, when cultural projects are conceived, existing buildings on the site are often valued, opting to operate through specific interventions that allow for hosting new programmatic uses while also highlighting the original works.
Argentina
Rafaela Cultural Center (Former Municipal Market) Airaudo + Caballero + Giménez Rita + Llonch
This project for the Rafaela Cultural Center arises from the premise of restoring the Old Municipal Market to its elegance and pride with which it was designed, restoring its original facades, and re-establishing the original entrances on its axes. The aim was to recover its historical and heritage character by providing it with a daily and everyday program, ensuring its continuous and permanent use by the population.
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The old Marconetti Mill dates back to the years 1920 and 1921 and represents a clear example of the industrial architecture of the time. The project starts by conceiving the original building as a container on which a balanced operation is carried out, accommodating new programmatic uses aimed at teaching visual arts, music, dance, and other activities of the Municipal Lyceum.
Art Gallery (Former Industrial Warehouse) Nicolás Fernández Sanz
The project is developed in a warehouse built in the mid-20th century in the Villa Crespo neighborhood. Inside the block, a large industrial nave filled with air and light, used for many years for the storage of industrial spare parts, houses the headquarters of the historic Ruth Benzacar Art Gallery. The project is essentially an intervention, interested in taking advantage of the existing without forcibly imposing an ideal over the concrete.
Bicentennial Museum (Former Taylor Customs House) B4FS Arquitectos
The project for the Taylor Customs House proposes the material and symbolic recovery of the site and the enhancement of the existing fragments of the historic complex, transforming the area into a contemporary museum space. In this way, the Taylor Customs House Museum integrates with the Bicentennial Park and Cultural Center area, becoming an authentic civic-cultural corridor.
Brazil
The original project, built in the last decade of the 19th century to host the School of Arts and Crafts, was never fully completed. Since then, the building has received different uses, suffered aggressions, and endured periods of abandonment. The intervention, which aimed to adapt the building to the technical and functional needs of hosting the State Pinacoteca, created a new spatiality throughout the entire building, juxtaposing and highlighting previous interventions, including the marks of ancient scaffolding.
An important building of the Station Plaza Complex, which served as the headquarters of the now-defunct Federal Railways S/A (RFFSA), was occupied in 2017 by the interior architecture exhibition CASACOR Minas, becoming a space for experimentation for more than 50 professionals and students in the fields of architecture and design. In the future, it will house the facilities of the Railway Museum after more than a decade of closure.
Fortes Vilaça Gallery (Former Industrial Warehouse) Tacoa Arquitetos
The space of the Fortes Vilaça Gallery has been used by various industries over the years. Before being occupied by the gallery, it operated as an automobile workshop. The project maintained the original walls of the nave, which, due to its height and large spans, allowed for the installation of large works that would not normally fit in domestic-scale rooms, facilitating the coexistence of various sectors in the same space.
"Structural Archaeology" Space (Former Brazil Cinema Theater) Vazio S/A
The "Structural Archaeology" Project operates in a residual space originating from the conversion of the Brazil Cinema Theater, built in 1932, into a Cultural Center. In this process of repurposing, an architectural void was generated between the sloping roof and the slab of the new dance hall. Within this void, the layers of the building's memory are expressed, from its exposed vertebrae to the varied floor designs, embodying the motto of a new relationship between art, architecture, and the city.
MALHA (Former Storage Warehouse) Tavares Duayer Arquitetura
By taking advantage of the existing structure of a storage building, a new democratic space for debate and learning is created to promote meetings and exchanges. MALHA features a photography studio, a sewing studio, and small offices for residents, providing various forms of appropriation and occupation while promoting the realization of fashion shows, markets, debates, and film screenings.
Chile
Valparaíso Cultural Park Transmission Building (Former Prison, Inmate Gallery) HLPS
All existing constructions on the grounds of the Valparaíso Prison were cleared, except for the old access building, the Spanish powder magazine, and the Inmate Gallery. The latter was completely repurposed, now called the "Transmission Building," housing music rehearsal rooms, rooms for dance practice, and spaces for theater, painting, and sculpture. The facade of the building and the interior walls were preserved, where some of the drawings made by the inmates are still visible.
NAVE (Former Mansion from the Early 20th Century) / Smiljan Radic
NAVE is a space for research and creation of contemporary Living Arts materialized in an old mansion from the early 20th century. The building had a high level of deterioration due to damages caused by a fire and the earthquake of 2010. The rehabilitation of the property aims to restore and maintain the existing facade, allowing permeability through the openings and fostering a pedestrian-scale relationship with the neighborhood.
Railway Museum Pablo Neruda (Former Machine House of Temuco) Chauriye Stager Arquitectos
The Pablo Neruda Railway Museum is situated in the building of the old Machine House of Temuco, a construction that started in 1929 and concluded in 1941. The municipality managed to rescue the building and declared it, along with the locomotives it housed, as a National Monument. Damaged by the passage of time, constant humidity, and earthquakes, a major restoration project was initiated, ultimately transforming it into the Pablo Neruda Railway Museum.
Machmar Mill Art Center (Former Humberto Machmar Mill) PLAN Arquitecto
This project proposes the adaptation of a heritage building, an old Mill from the 1940s belonging to Humberto Machmar, to become an Art Center, combining the new program and current technologies with its heritage legacy. The building seeks to create an analogy with the flour production machinery, manifesting all its installations in plain sight and making the production systems part of the design.
Colombia
This memory space also serves as an area for the production and exhibition of artistic works. Located in an old mansion presumed to be from the 17th century, featuring colonial typology, abandoned and in ruins, the project emphasizes the necessity to establish an architecture that is invisible, horizontal, and non-hierarchical, where the existing, open, and unfinished vestiges are articulated in dialogue with the new construction.
Plural Arkhé Gallery (Former 1950s Traditional House) Yemail Arquitectura
This gallery space, a Latin American art documentation center, and café in the San Felipe neighborhood of Bogotá are the result of the intervention and extension of the two floors of a traditional house from the 1950s. The project is characterized by the absence of finishes or materials alien to the pre-existing ones, respecting the original ensemble made up of bricks, clay tiles, and exposed metal structures.
Mexico
This project proposes the restoration of the Santo Domingo de Soriano Monastery, comprising a collection of buildings that are part of the city's first Dominican convent, to transform it into the San Pablo Academic and Cultural Center. Through this project, practically 90% of the high and low corridors of the convent were restored, along with part of the church and the entire Chapel of the Rosary.
CONARTE Cultural Center and Library (Former Warehouse) Anagrama
In the heart of Monterrey lies Fundidora Park, a unique industrial archaeology area. Here, with the mission of creating a space that promotes the love of reading and learning for children, Anagrama Studio proposes a Cultural Center and library inside a "warehouse-type" building, taking into account its heritage nature.
This project involves adapting an existing early 20th-century mansion into a Cultural Center. The imperative to preserve the original property led to the decision for the project to highlight the new uses while respecting the existing shell. As a result, the project comprises several elements that define the intervention, marking different routes and integrating the various parts of the complex.
OMR Art Gallery (Former Margolin Hall) Mateo Riestra + José Arnaud-Bello + Max von Werz
This project involves the repurposing of Margolin Hall, a brutalist structure originally dedicated to the sale of records and books, transformed to house the renowned contemporary art gallery OMR. The design strategy was to preserve the existing construction as much as possible, toning down certain interior details to highlight the building's character and turn it into a generous exhibition space.
Monclova Projects Gallery (Former Industrial Warehouse) Andrés Pastor + Manuel Lara
The project was based on the recycling of an existing industrial structure to house a new art gallery. Here, through very specific interventions, a few new elements were incorporated, providing the space with natural lighting and ventilation. The new program required relocating the entrance to the upper floor, where a large-format exhibition hall and two special rooms are located.
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*This article was originally published on September 18, 2019.
.jpg?1567374389 "Cultural Centers, Museums, and Galleries: Ancient Buildings Transformed into Art Spaces in Latin America")
