IOANA . sustainable mercedes-benz museum with imax theater & restoration workshop . docs of south boston, massachusetts ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Proposal for a (rather gigantic) 100,000 sf Mercedes-Benz museum with an Imax theater & a 50,000 sf restoration shop to be located on the docks of South Boston.

Impressions of the site: a wasteland of huge proportions of an inherent simple bigness; a man-made emptiness scattered with large objects; a site in waiting.

The organization and location of the museum relates to a desire for urban regeneration, to reactivate the former working docks and to create a new urban geometry that relates to the scale and character of this big man-made peninsula. Thus, the museum head, the Imax theater (the ‘egg’) sits in a new central-park-proportioned lawn, while the rest of the museum rises up off the ground to allow the restoration shop underneath to connect to the docks where ships would disembark cars. A sustainable working museum (see notes on ‘green’ concepts under photos).

MUSEUM CONCEPT: a matrix (a sea) of cars, arranged horizontally across by systems/material components (motor, electrical, glass, rubber, seats, frame, whole) and vertically by time. The whole car would be displayed in the brightest spot, along the southern facade. This idea spawned out of a visit to the Mercedes-Benz restoration workshop in Western Mass., upon witnessing the amount of specific care & knowledge that is put into these individual components.

SOLAR HEATING: The southern facade is a 'double skin' which catches the sun's warmth and distributes it through spaces around the columns - which are there to make the 'sea of cars' appear to be a light floating plane. In the summer the facade opens up to the cooling breeze. The north wall, by contrast, is a barrier blocking the cold winter winds.