The Ministry of Spatial Planning, Urbanism and State Property of Montenegro announced that the group led by the Milan/ London-based practice a-fact and composed by LAND, Maffeis Engineering and Charcoalblue has won the International Competition for “conceptual architectural design of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Natural History Museum and Park of Arts & Culture with associated cultural facilities” in Podgorica, the capital city of Montenegro.

The international Jury selected the project among 48 submissions from worldwide renowned practices such as Sou Fujimoto, Junya Ishigami, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Snøhetta, MCA - Mario Cucinella Architects and Stefano Boeri Architetti.
According to the design by a-fact, the new museum district and the Park of Arts & Culture will create a new urban attractor, hosting a large program of public events to celebrate culture, arts and heritage. The complex will offer permanent and temporary exhibitions, research and didactic labs, informal meeting spaces, a new botanical garden and a large flexible outdoor space for venues and events that will complement the new riverfront offering breathtaking perspectives of the river and the city.
 
According to the jury the “composition of the three distinct yet related entities emerging gracefully from the riverbank landscape and creating a strong landmark for the city – a civic destination for both residents and visitors.

The remarkable nature of Montenegro inspires the proposal, the stone cladding pays homage to the encircling mountains while establishing a new iconic architectural language that enhances the park and river scenery”.

What the buildings take away from the land is returned with a generous roof that merges with the landscape and offers a new natural outdoor gathering place with wonderful views over the riverwalk. The vegetation on the roof dissolves the lines between the building and the terrain while ensuring a continuous movement across the landscape and enriching the local biodiversity.

National Museum of Contemporary Art, Natural History Museum and Park of Arts & Culture International by a-fact. Rendering by EmmeWorks.
 
The winning proposal is “architecture that connects culture and nature by rejoining the Morača River with the city. The new museum district and the park of arts & culture will spark Podgorica’s social life, becoming a vibrant and dynamic public attractor. The buildings promote a new paradigm of sustainability by encouraging the interaction between indoor and outdoor spaces and by exploring the contemporary use of local materials and construction techniques."
Andrea Rossi, Giovanni Sanna and Pierluigi Turco, co-founding architects of a-fact.

The landscape design generates a new river landscape connecting the river with the city, a blue-green infrastructure that incorporates existing values and improves the park's biodiversity with the retention of 290 trees, the addition of 532 new trees of different species and 900 shrubs.

Sustainability is at the heart of the proposal as the project aims to adopt and integrate passive and active environmental strategies to reduce the overall energy consumption for heating, cooling, artificial lighting and potable water use. In addition, implementing modern construction techniques combined with using local materials positively impacts the buildings’ life cycle and the overall reduction of their carbon emissions.

More information

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Architects
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Collaborators
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Landscape design.- LAND Italia.
Structural and Façade Engineering.- Maffeis Engineering.
Experience design.- Charcoalblue.
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Client
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Ministry of Spatial Planning, Urbanism and State Property.
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Area
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Approx. 14.500 sqm.
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Dates
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Competition.- 2024.
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Location
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Podgorica, Montenegro.
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Renderings
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a-fact is an architecture practice founded in late 2022 by Andrea Rossi, Giovanni Sanna and Pierluigi Turco which is composed of a multidisciplinary team headquartered in Milan and London.

They are architects, thinkers, engineers and designers. They believe that architecture shapes the future of our communities. They draw energy from contextual data to generate resilient ecosystems where people can live, work and thrive. They join forces with experts from diverse fields, to deliver sustainable projects for forward-thinking clients.

Our culture pushes them to explore the concept of “factual sustainability” that - as Hans Rosling says in Factfulness - allows us to welcome complexity,  warying of slogans and oversimplification of key sustainable-design concepts. Collecting, processing and transforming contextual data into integrated architectural ideas means designing case-by-case, tackling environmental, economic and social challenges towards a more factual paradigm of circularity and a renewed harmony with nature.

They do this conscious of our responsibility – as architects – to imagine and shape flexible cities, buildings and spaces able to house a thriving future and its possible evolutions. They call this the A-FACTOR.
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