The museum will house objects, devices and machines – some of which can be handled by visitors – to engage in or simulate scientific experiences. The goal is to get the public interested in and get involved with the innovative features of the technological world.
The museum will be part of a campus, one of several educational and sports facilities, in accordance with the master plan of Madeira Tecnopolo, in the city of Funchal. The museum plot is located north of the highway “cota 200” and on the bank of São João River. Comprising an area with approximately 17.000 square metres, it will have two spaces for temporary exhibitions, an auditorium, classrooms, shops, and a cafeteria. It will also have an image museum housing the region’s important photography collection.
The museum has an elongated and irregular shape. Its central body rests on the ground, leaving the extremities suspended. It is cut lengthwise by a sort of geological fault, corresponding on the inside to a space lit by a skylight around which the vertical circulation takes place.
Looking at a cross section, the building is asymmetrical and irregular, with non-vertical façades, making it look like a dynamic structure. The surfaces have multiple faces and non-orthogonal geometry, but the uniform cladding makes it cohesive and unified.
The volume of the museum lies parallel to the watercourse and it does not match the scale, the alignment or the orientation of the nearby buildings; it is disconnected from the conformities and analogies that bring together the rest of the urban fabric. In the local context it is an autonomous object.
Making its shape and embedding it locally – establishing on-site connections – made use of a process of resonance/dissonance that involves the orography, in which certain dynamic aspects such as movement, balance, variability and irregularity play a part.
