MAC CWB Proposal

Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Curitiba

Curitiba Museum of Contemporary Art

From at-risk historic brewery to Landmark Museum

For the Final Graduation Project (FGP) the chosen theme merged many passions in parallel, specifically Museology and Exhibits, Historic Preservation, and Architectural Design. All these interests were applied to the historical Atlântica Brewery, a complex that had been a landmark in Curitiba's old industrial district since it's founding in 1912 and was shut down in 2016, leaving the site abandoned and at risk of being exploited by gentrification and aggressive real estate development interests.

The methodology

In order to tackle the solo project that was the result of the undergraduate thesis, a methodology had to be established. The process started with a veritable industrial archeology process of research to understand how the factory complex evolved and ended up with it’s final conformation, in order to establish a hierarchy of pavilions to preserve, modify, or demolish. From there, based on the previously written thesis, the program of needs for the new museum was listed and zoned accordingly, treating the industrial site as a whole and creating a master plan organizing growth and evolution as a museum’s complexity grew over time.

After the macro scale was dealt with, the project continued with a closer look at each of the blocks that are part of the institutional activities, like scenic and performance arts, communication and education, technical and so forth. 

The Museum

The result was a museum and entertainment complex spanning over 350,000 square feet that managed to preserve not only the overall configuration of the brewery and industrial archetypes in a neighborhood of vanishing industrial language, but also retained 41% of the original structure and spatial organization, a testament to adaptive reuse as a means of preservation.

The complex spans many diverse uses, the technical (like workshops and laboratories), educational (conference rooms and classrooms), administrative (with all the necessary offices and spaces required in a large scale museum), exhibition (from visual to performance arts), and leisure (with a café, gift shop, and an upscale restaurant). The complex - of course - also includes all the supporting infrastructure needed for optimal and independent operation, being able to be open to the public in the presented stage and later evolving to a 100% occupation state without any restructuring needs.