The building that turns me into an involuntary voyeur of the staircase

Long time ago there is one man who is very wealthy, he studied mathematics and computer science but made his fortune though implementing a gambling system. Then he started to collect art. His collections are quite massive to the extent that there is no place to store them. He was thinking of why not design a museum to store the collections? This is the story behind the birth of MONA - Museum of Old and New. Over the years, MONA has been received with popularity, in spite of its relatively remote location. It becomes not only a container for art, but also an event space for wedding functions.

Architectural strategies employed in MONA
- Spatial organisation. Three storey void transforms the space and our sensations drastically. This creation of ‘nothingness’ is a perceptual bombardment to us. Sometimes it is not about the presence, but the absence.

- Materiality. MONA is an amalgam of sandstone and precast concrete. As Juhani Pallasmaa suggested in his book ‘The Eyes of the Skin’, we should not only using both of our eyes to see, but also to touch. To experience the weight, texture, temperature, light.

- Freedom in circulation. The approach employed in the design of circulation is not that complicated. All you have to do is to cut some voids on each floor slab and then connect the levels with folding staircases. However, the effect is subversive. It almost turns me into an involuntary voyeur of the staircase. I walked around it again and again, ignoring the presence of all the people that passes me. It remind one of Steven Holl’s work as well as the Chinese gardening philosophy promoted by the Pritzker price winner Wang Shu. I.e. the unfolding of space, circulation and the richness in views.

- Experience driven. You can tell that the architect is really thinking about how people experience the space. One move through the dark immersive space to the light and sublime space, showered in light.

Pallasmaa, Juhani. 2012. The eye of the skin: architecture and the senses. Chichester, West Sussex U.K. : Wiley

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