UGM

Year 2010
Location Maribor, Slovenia
Typology Museum
Scale 18.600 m2
Status Competition entry
Authors Miha Volgemut/ Yue Chen/ Simon Kutin/ Andrej Sergaš/ Peter Sovinc

ART GALLERY MARIBOR

Location for the new UGM is placed on the corner of the medieval city and along the river. Such a fusion of complex and focused forces suggests a rather sensible, dynamic and strong reaction to the situation. So, to keep up the intensity of the urban dialog among such features, we propose a charismatic yet dynamic contemporary epicenter of the medieval organism that will synthesize and organize manifold forces of the urban field into consistent urban accentuation.
We consider expression, space and program equally important and as a whole they can generate new intensity in a broader urban area. Ambitious project with high level of artistic expression and intensive program will activate the regeneration of the exhausted and dying surrounding. It will bring attention of other developers to invest in the area and to make this urban area attractive and profitable. 

Urbanisticaly we approached the area with the structure of so called “stripes”, which carries on the character and logic of organic structure within the old city. The stripes are running downward towards the river. The aim was that new structure organically merges with surrounding structure and achieves new coherency and continuity of historical organism.   
The concept for the new structure contains the dynamic of the three “stripes”. The middle stripe is linking one and it carries public lobby horizontally and vertically through the whole competition area, thus connects north park with waterfront space and it is also the mediate space between the programs inside the new building.
For the east stripe at the waterfront, we propose new strong architectural presence which forms together with existing buildings new architectural ensemble.