At Ánima Village in Los Cabos, a long ramp slips away from the plaza and drops four meters into the ground. The descent leads to Arte Abierto Baja, a 180-square-meter open-air gallery designed by Sordo Madaleno for large-scale sculpture and site-specific installations. Above, the mixed-use development continues around terracotta pavilions and planted squares. Below, the architecture reduces itself to tall walls, rough concrete and open sky.
The 17-meter ramp is partly covered, keeping the arrival compressed until the gallery opens at its base. Walls rise more than five meters around the space, enough to give large works a real sense of enclosure while leaving the roof completely open. Fernando Sordo Madaleno describes the sequence as a shift from compression to exposure, with the landscape entering the room once visitors reach the bottom.
images © Pablo Manjarrez
rough concrete meets the baja landscape
Pigmented bush-hammered concrete runs across the walls of Sordo Madaleno’s Arte Abierto Baja, which lends a coarse surface that catches the hard light of Baja California Sur. The material keeps the space visually close to the rocky, arid terrain surrounding Los Cabos, while its thickness gives the gallery enough weight to stand apart from the lighter architecture above.
The simplicity of the architecture leaves plenty of room for the work itself. Arte Abierto Baja opens with an installation by Mexican artist Abraham Cruzvillegas, whose practice often works through found materials and improvised structures. Here, the architects harness the scale of the enclosure to give sculpture room to occupy the open air. Sunlight, heat and changing shadows enter the viewing experience along with the work.
Arte Abierto Baja sits four meters below the plazas of Ánima Village in Los Cabos
the gallery sits beneath ánima village
Arte Abierto Baja forms part of Sordo Madaleno’s wider masterplan for Ánima Village, a six-hectare development arranged around public plazas and desert-adapted planting. Six terracotta pavilions sit across the site, with shaded pedestrian areas connecting retail spaces and open-air squares. The landscape strategy responds directly to a climate that can reach 36 degrees Celsius, thus using planting to bring shade and cooling into the public areas.
The gallery takes a different approach within that larger composition. Its walls stay largely out of view from the plaza, and the shift below grade creates a distinct space without cutting it off from the village around it. Visitors can arrive specifically for an exhibition or come across the entrance while moving through the development, with the ramp acting as the threshold between the activity above and the more contained space below.
a 17-meter ramp creates the transition from the mixed-use development into the open-air gallery
Sordo Madaleno enclosed the 180-square-meter space with walls rising more than five meters
pigmented bush-hammered concrete gives the gallery a dense tactile surface against the desert
the roofless gallery keeps the sky and arid landscape present around each installation
the inaugural installation is by Mexican artist Abraham Cruzvillegas
Arte Abierto Baja forms part of Sordo Madaleno’s larger Ánima Village masterplan
project info:
name: Arte Abierto Baja
architect: Sordo Madaleno Arquitectos | @sordo_madaleno
location: Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, Mexico
development: Ánima Village | @animavillagecabo
area: 180 square meters
photography: © Pablo Manjarrez | Pablo Manjarrez
inaugural artist: Abraham Cruzvillegas
landscape architecture: PAAR
lighting design: Artec
wayfinding, street furniture: Polvora Design
developer, project management: SOMA
The post sordo madaleno sinks open-air art gallery four meters below ground in los cabos appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.