Inhotim Contemporary Art Center

By Francesco Pagliari - 5 April 2011

Set in luxuriant vegetation just outside the city of Belo Horizonte in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, the Inhotim Cultural Institute marries art, architecture and landscape. As a botanical oasis, it boasts thousands of plant species. As a centre for contemporary art, it hosts dozens of international works set in undulating landscaped grounds. As an architecture, it operates an amalgam of artworks and exhibition spaces including galleries for a range of coordinated events or dedicated to the works of a single artist. With its natural “collection” of botanical species and meaningful insights into how art and architecture can intertwine, the park complex delivers an emotional experience that is both sensory and cultural.
The young architects of Brazilian practice Arquitetos Associados were given the brief of designing three buildings, each with its own specific style and function in keeping with the multi-facetted character of the park. One gallery is dedicated to the artist Miguel Río Branco; another, the Educational Centre, is named after landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx; the third, the Cosmococa Gallery, houses the distinctive installations of this avant-garde group that actively involve the spectator in a sensory, tactile experience. Each building reflects the attitude to art expressed by the works on display, relating to its surroundings with different strategies.
Being able to work directly with Miguel Río Branco led to the creation of a pavilion that blends materiality and sensory refinement. Taking up a suggestion by the artist himself, the gallery stands in its landscape like a naturally outcropping mineral. Architecture and artwork become one and the same.
The building develops over several gradients making the terrain a fundamental part of the architectural programme. This is underlined by a paved pathway rising on the west perimeter and leading to an intermediate level where it opens out into a square flanked by a coffee shop...