Museo
Maya de America

Guatemala City is a culturally intricate and historically rich place with a disruptive relationship to its past. Opposing forces are a recurrent theme within its modern urban environment. Whether it is ancient to modern, wealth to poverty, indigenous to foreign, what is revealed, is a city built on contrasts. Under this scope, the new Museo Maya de América (MUMA) is designed to act beyond its strict programmatic purpose as a museum. It aspires to be a catalyst for social activity and to inhabit the site as carrier of civic identity, culture and heritage.

Amongst the most ambitious initiatives under development in Central America, it is planned to bring together Guatemala’s collections of Mayan objects, artefacts, artworks and textiles, host educational programs and accommodate state of the art research facilities; becoming a most influential transmitter of knowledge relating to the history and tradition of the Mayan Civilisation. Located on the northern edge of L’Aurora Park, the new museum building will form the culmination of a cultural axis that includes the Guatemalan Museum of Contemporary Art and the Children’s Museum. Re-enforcing a dense cluster of cultural institutions, the MUMA will become a landmark further supporting social and commercial activities within the open spaces of the adjacent park, so as to provide a common ground of interaction for tourists and residents alike.

The design of the new museum draws its inspiration from the language of traditional Mayan temple architecture in terms of tectonic simplicity and landscape integration. The building is formed by a simple design gesture of two principle constituent elements, a fragmented plinth and floating monolithic box. It presents an abstract, symbolic form to the surrounding city. Additionally, as vehicular traffic does not interrupt the building’s immediate adjacency to the park, it succeeds to achieve complete integration to its surrounding context; a subtle form situated amongst a dense grove of trees.