UNICAMP + CSR = (MEdeC)²
The Mission:
In order to position the Museu Exploratorio de Ciencias (MEdeC) of UNICAMP on the world’s museum map it is essential to both simultaneously rethink its role as a ‘museum’ for the 21st Century, and to take advantage of its privileged position within Campinas – Brazil’s “Silicon Valley”.
We envision a museum that acts as generative ‘seed’ for the region – through its dynamic network – rather than as a building complex. This operates on two scales within the project site. It serves as a multiplicity of interfaces and movements through a controlled layering of static and mobile architectural elements /programs. It also reprints this idea analogously onto the region scale in a system of scientific exchange.
We believe that the MEdeC of UNICAMP can be much more than an educational institute or a museum, but as a laboratory of ‘soft science’ serving to connect science with society: framing the discovery and wonder of science and its potentiality as a medium for social outreach, while using the emergent social networks and stakeholders created as a means of furthering scientific endeavor. A program celebrating the mission of UNICAMP within the dimension of corporate social responsibility (CSR) therefore amplifies the impact of the museum exponentially:
UNICAMP + CSR = (MEdeC)²
To enable this, our scheme introduces the following:
• Creating a ‘stakeholder companion network’, a strategic alliance between academic, business and educational interests – using CSR approaches to generate the project both in its generative linkages to Campinas and in its internal organization.
• ‘Outreach’ trucks – company-sponsored mobile carriers of laboratories, experiments, child-constructed and/or group-work artifacts, and promotional equipment – a physical manifestation of the outreach/mentorship mission of the museum to Campinas in addition to forming the dynamic ‘nervous system’ of the museum itself (diagram 1).
• A multi-timescale approach in engaging with the museum: both as a 24-hour institute, sustained by both diurnal and nocturnal scientific activities and the addition of dispersed residential ‘cabins’ (diagram 2), and by long-term repeated activities – visits over a sustained period by school children or companies engaged in time-based experiments and studies (diagram 3).
• A museum of living experiment, that utilizes the spatial and enclosure variations needed across a spectrum of scientific research, from the tight, controlled environments of fiber optics and circuit design, the virtual environment of media exchange, through to more expansive and open environments of agricultural testing and plant cultivation. Throughout this we wish to create an atmosphere of freedom, direct access and to encourage a climate of playful curiosity for the visitor. (plans).
The Concept:
The built museum is not a finished product, but rather a loose network of envelopes and boundaries that provide, through a variety of interface conditions, a multiplicity of conditions inducive to a range of scientific programs: with the more industrial, large-scale experiments and group construction activities to the north of the site filtering down to more discreet laboratories, exhibits and workshops to the south – increasingly set within and dominated by the existing topography of the land (diagram 4).
The aim is to keep the museum complex as cost-effective as possible by maintaining a low-rise, minimum enclosure scheme. The sculpted, rising ground plane and one elevated deck sitting below a simple planted roofscape capable of expansion is pierced by a wide grid of tight ‘energy points’ combining power/media/information/vertical access/security/storage/sleeping cabins (diagram 5 and section).
It is the various combination of four architectonic elements: the decks/ground plane, the roof, the enclosures and the vertical energy points, together with the dynamic insertion of trucks that generate the opportunities within the museum program (axonometric).
The roof is set at the datum of the Time and Space Square from which access is gained. The Square also acts as a circulatory ‘slingshot’ allowing visitors to use its circular geometry to gain access via a ramp to the upper level of the museum – therefore forming an integral component to the scheme (diagram 6). In addition, the museum’s north grid is both practically and symbolically aligned to the center point of the UNICAMP campus (perspective 1).
Visitors are permitted to explore the museum in a large variety of ways, with the more controlled, linear exhibit programs arranged to the north, and episodic ‘event’ spaces to the south. The program of juxtapose places research at the heart of “exhibition” by intertwining visitor’s path with research areas, and thereby acknowledging the importance of the behind-the-scene research (sai chun’s stuff).
The support spine of the museum, an access route generated by the passage of container trucks, provides both a logistical organization and an orientation to the scheme. A single, circular elevator deck/turntable provides container access to the upper floor and roof deck (diagram 7). The perimeter surface in addition to clusters across this spine allow for the trucks to engage as mobile laboratories and supply components within the arrangement (perspective 2) providing a vital transformative element into the museum and acting as the interface with the wider program of ‘outreach’ across the region.
This is a museum not confined by the limits of the site, or of a built state, but as a series of interfaces and nodes. Some covered, some enclosed, some open and some mobile.
UNICAMP + CSR = (MEdeC)²
The Mission:
In order to position the Museu Exploratorio de Ciencias (MEdeC) of UNICAMP on the world’s museum map it is essential to both simultaneously rethink its role as a ‘museum’ for the 21st Century, and to take advantage of its privileged position within Campinas – Brazil’s “Silicon Valley”.
We envision a museum that acts as generative ‘seed’ for the region – through its dynamic network – rather than as a building complex. This operates on two scales within the project site. It serves as a multiplicity of interfaces and movements through a controlled layering of static and mobile architectural elements /programs. It also reprints this idea analogously onto the region scale in a system of scientific exchange.
We believe that the MEdeC of UNICAMP can be much more than an educational institute or a museum, but as a laboratory of ‘soft science’ serving to connect science with society: framing the discovery and wonder of science and its potentiality as a medium for social outreach, while using the emergent social networks and stakeholders created as a means of furthering scientific endeavor. A program celebrating the mission of UNICAMP within the dimension of corporate social responsibility (CSR) therefore amplifies the impact of the museum exponentially:
UNICAMP + CSR = (MEdeC)²
To enable this, our scheme introduces the following:
• Creating a ‘stakeholder companion network’, a strategic alliance between academic, business and educational interests – using CSR approaches to generate the project both in its generative linkages to Campinas and in its internal organization.
• ‘Outreach’ trucks – company-sponsored mobile carriers of laboratories, experiments, child-constructed and/or group-work artifacts, and promotional equipment – a physical manifestation of the outreach/mentorship mission of the museum to Campinas in addition to forming the dynamic ‘nervous system’ of the museum itself (diagram 1).
• A multi-timescale approach in engaging with the museum: both as a 24-hour institute, sustained by both diurnal and nocturnal scientific activities and the addition of dispersed residential ‘cabins’ (diagram 2), and by long-term repeated activities – visits over a sustained period by school children or companies engaged in time-based experiments and studies (diagram 3).
• A museum of living experiment, that utilizes the spatial and enclosure variations needed across a spectrum of scientific research, from the tight, controlled environments of fiber optics and circuit design, the virtual environment of media exchange, through to more expansive and open environments of agricultural testing and plant cultivation. Throughout this we wish to create an atmosphere of freedom, direct access and to encourage a climate of playful curiosity for the visitor. (plans).
The Concept:
The built museum is not a finished product, but rather a loose network of envelopes and boundaries that provide, through a variety of interface conditions, a multiplicity of conditions inducive to a range of scientific programs: with the more industrial, large-scale experiments and group construction activities to the north of the site filtering down to more discreet laboratories, exhibits and workshops to the south – increasingly set within and dominated by the existing topography of the land (diagram 4).
The aim is to keep the museum complex as cost-effective as possible by maintaining a low-rise, minimum enclosure scheme. The sculpted, rising ground plane and one elevated deck sitting below a simple planted roofscape capable of expansion is pierced by a wide grid of tight ‘energy points’ combining power/media/information/vertical access/security/storage/sleeping cabins (diagram 5 and section).
It is the various combination of four architectonic elements: the decks/ground plane, the roof, the enclosures and the vertical energy points, together with the dynamic insertion of trucks that generate the opportunities within the museum program (axonometric).
The roof is set at the datum of the Time and Space Square from which access is gained. The Square also acts as a circulatory ‘slingshot’ allowing visitors to use its circular geometry to gain access via a ramp to the upper level of the museum – therefore forming an integral component to the scheme (diagram 6). In addition, the museum’s north grid is both practically and symbolically aligned to the center point of the UNICAMP campus (perspective 1).
Visitors are permitted to explore the museum in a large variety of ways, with the more controlled, linear exhibit programs arranged to the north, and episodic ‘event’ spaces to the south. The program of juxtapose places research at the heart of “exhibition” by intertwining visitor’s path with research areas, and thereby acknowledging the importance of the behind-the-scene research (sai chun’s stuff).
The support spine of the museum, an access route generated by the passage of container trucks, provides both a logistical organization and an orientation to the scheme. A single, circular elevator deck/turntable provides container access to the upper floor and roof deck (diagram 7). The perimeter surface in addition to clusters across this spine allow for the trucks to engage as mobile laboratories and supply components within the arrangement (perspective 2) providing a vital transformative element into the museum and acting as the interface with the wider program of ‘outreach’ across the region.
This is a museum not confined by the limits of the site, or of a built state, but as a series of interfaces and nodes. Some covered, some enclosed, some open and some mobile.