The form of the Museum Building Complex is designed to become a landmark for the whole of the city of Baku. It is a composition of two long Oil-blobs which are spurting out of the landscape and the surrounding Park Lake.
In this composition it is important to show the relation of Oil to both Earth and Water.
Earth is used here as an organic museological parameter. Thus in our proposal the strong Earth-scape of the contoured seven Park-zones, passes through the major Reception areas of the Museum (Main Reception at the Street ground level and Exhibition Reception at the Park ground level). This creates a direct organic relation between the interior and the exterior space of the Museum.
In terms of Water, our design proposes a special treatment for the external skin of the main volume of the Museum. The building's skin is designed as a system of long horizontal strip-louvres, of U-shape. Each louvre is filled with a controllable amount of water. The water is dripping from one louvre to the other, from the highest to the lowest louvre. This creates a controlled water-dripping curtain, a Water-skin, all over the building. This operates as a natural cooling system, and as a major design principle for the surface of the building. This strip-louvres system extends from the western end of the Park-Lake up to the top of the buiding, and so it gives the impression that the building just came out of the water, and reminds us that the water plays a generating role for the Oil.
Baku Oil Museum & University Complex
ANAMORPHOSIS Architects:
Nikos Georgiadis, Tota Mamalaki, Kostas Kakoyiannis, Vaios Zitonoulis
Design Team:
Jose Carlos Gonzalez Leal, Jed Laver, Marzena Paraniak, Archontis Karanasios, Phaedra Crespi, Julia Desli, Enrique Ramirez,
Emma Victoria Savvaidi,
Andronike Giannatou
