National Centre for Contemporary Art

At Angulo Arquitectura, we are committed to an architectural design where the building’s volume, whose basic geometric forms are essentially born from Russian Suprematism, resolves the site’s challenges. The choice was made to place the building on a base that elevates it above the initial level, thus achieving greater prominence than the scale of the site affords it over its surroundings. The slender vertical volume takes the form of a screen facing the large park, which will interact with the surrounding public, serving as a point of attraction towards the building’s interior. Its skin becomes concave, and its gesture seems to reach out to the public present in the plaza. The plaza is the transition element from exterior to interior, from the park to the NCCA, the open-air space where various contemporary art events can be held, directly connected to the interior boulevard that forms the atrium on the ground floor. Hidden behind the large screen are the exhibition halls that house the most demanding uses. These volumes lose the rigidity of their predecessor to adapt to the northern boundary of the site and generate interstitial spaces that enrich the user experience.

The large screen, a tribute to the seventh art, draws all eyes around the preceding park, and behind it lies the program of the New Moscow Centre for Contemporary Art, NCCA Moscow. Its plaza takes us over the road that limits the site, leading us under the vertical volume, like a gigantic door, into the luminous atrium-boulevard. This is the heart of the building, the starting point guiding us through our visit as exhibition space visitors, auditorium spectators, and attentive participants in conference rooms, etc. Ultimately, this is a space for interaction between people and art in all its broad spectrum. The exhibition halls and the main auditorium are located in the volumes hidden behind the screen building, which houses the more public program on its lower floors, leaving the private residential and administrative spaces on the upper floors with independent access from the first floor.