Furor Erupts Over Design Choice for New National Museum of Ecuador

By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy. We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. The Ecuadorian Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture on July 6 named a winner of the competition to design the new National Museum of Ecuador (MuNA) and touched off a controversy that to date has seen the resignation of at least two high-ranking officials, the Architects’ Newspaper reports. Titled “Ecos del Sol” (Echoes of the Sun), the winning design is a collaboration between Madrid-based architecture firm Studio Campo Baeza and Ecuadorian architecture office MAODA. The two firms responded to the call to design a structure housed in Quito’s historic La Carolina Park with what they described as “a box of light and shadow,” beating out 148 applicants representing more than twenty countries. The proposal was immediately greeted with derision by the public, owing to its exceedingly plain look, with commenters variously comparing the concrete edifice to a cardboard box, a bleak structure in a desolate Salvador Dalí landscape, and a character from the cartoon SpongeBob Squarepants. Another pointed out its similarities to a building constructed by Campo Baeza in Spain twenty-five years ago. AN reports that Romina Muñoz, Ecuador’s vice minister of culture and heritage, attempted to defend the winning design, but her comment “This goes beyond aesthetic preferences” generated a backlash, and she resigned from her post on July 9. MuNA executive director Carlos Eduardo Montalvo Puente subsequently left his role as well. Neither departure has yet been definitively connected to the kerfuffle. The country’s president, Daniel Noboa, is said to have distanced himself from the project, of which he was earlier an ardent proponent. MuNA currently occupies the Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana: The new structure is intended to house its 1.4 million heritage artifacts. The public appeared to prefer instead the second- and third-place designs, submitted by MCM+A and SANNA, Caá Porá Arquitectura, Estudio A0, Jerome Haferd Studio, and Taller Capital Landscape, respectively. A petition demanding the Ecuadorian government choose a different design for the $100 million project has to date signed by more than 20,000 people. Chief among the petitioners’ concerns is what they describe as a lack of technical and financial transparency regarding the competition process. Regarding the building’s design, signatories would like to see more attention paid to landscaping, and to the connection between the structure and its surrounding park, as well as to its ties to the country’s ”national identity.”