Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto
As one of the most important contemporary art museums in Portugal, the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto has collected a large number of valuable modern art pieces, including works by outstanding artists from both home and abroad, from the 1960s to the present.
In 2012, the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art was established as a national monument of Portugal.
The construction of the museum was designed by architect Álvaro Siza Vieira. In addition to a 4500 square meter exhibition hall, there are stairs, a concert hall, a library, a resource center, a shop, a café, and a leisure center, as well as a restaurant overlooking the park. The design here aims to be closer to nature, integrating with it as part of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art.
The museum is located within the large park of the Serralves Foundation, with a long shape, connected to the road on the north side and extending into the park on the south side, with a downward slope from north to south.
Since the site is within the park, Siza did not want to destroy the original sense of openness and decided to hide the volume of the building, a technique that is intriguing.
At the street side of the museum, there is a small entrance pavilion, followed by a long corridor, passing through a lawn courtyard, around a white house, and then through a dry landscape courtyard to reach the formal entrance of the museum. This makes the main body of the museum both physically and perceptually distant from the street, thus concealed.
The other three sides of the building face the park, and Siza also used the terrain to bury part of the building that does not require lighting underground, only slowly emerging from the ground at the southern end, greatly reducing the volume of the building.