National Museum of Ecuador

Our competition proposal for the new National Museum of Ecuador (MUNA) is centered on the creation of a new park across the corner from La Carolina Park, together with a large covered public space that continues a Latin American tradition exemplified by Lina Bo Bardi’s MASP in São Paulo and the great sheltered spaces by Niemeyer, Artigas, and Villanueva. It is conceived as a generous open-air space, accessible to all Ecuadorians, for the celebration of civic life and public participation.

The museum is organized as a composition of three volumes, each with a distinct form, materiality, and scale of approach. The first contains the museum’s public entrance and takes the form of a low, organic building positioned as a central kiosk within the park. The second is a floating horizontal volume housing the exhibition galleries and public programs. The third is the collections tower: a “tattooed” tower aligned with the north, south, east, and west axes, marking a symbolic point in the urban landscape. In this way, we conceive MUNA not as a uniform, closed, and homogeneous building, but as the coexistence of multiple identities: a project grounded in diversity, yet without formal stridency.

The landscape concept seeks to highlight the natural richness of the Quito Valley, particularly by preserving the memory of the former Iñaquito lake through a system of ‘cochas’ that celebrate the site’s hydrological history. The museographic project tells the story and culture of the country not as a linear chronology, but as a living network of encounters, exchanges, transformations, and continuities. Ecuador is presented as a tapestry woven from the intersections of landscape and people, animals and environments, beliefs and ideas, materials and technologies.