Bilbao Fine Arts Museum / Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao (SP)

The proposal seeks to reorient the museum towards the city by restoring the façade of the existing building and making it more permeable, while enhancing the institution’s unique identity. The guiding principle behind the project is to make the 1945 building the primary protagonist by restoring its original entrance and its logical internal sequence of spaces. A unique structure rests respectfully across the 1945 and 1970 buildings at the rear, equipping the museum with 2,000 square-metres of new galleries on a single open, flexible floor – an ideal gallery space for any museum curator.

The revitalisation turns Plaza Arriaga into the new heart along the museum’s spine, with light streaming in from the rooflight piercing through the new gallery spaces above. The ground floor is on a single accessible plane allowing visitors to orient themselves easily. The new addition is characterised by a modelled façade with viewing terraces to enhance its slenderness, with minimal supports placed away from the footprint of the existing buildings. The design creates a new and sympathetic relationship to the city of which it is an important part.