Mumbai Museum - North Wing

A courtyard capturing the seasons

GROSS. MAX in collaboration with Amanda Levete was selected  one of the eight finalist to design a new wing for the Mumbai City Museum. The new wing is set within Munbai’s oldest museum garden in Byculla. The design proposal featured a sunken courtyard with a reflecting pool as a mediating element between the new North Wing and the existing museum.

The courtyard creates a place for contemplation and reflection and a place for community. It is a metaphor for the cycle of the seasons, capturing the dramatic contrast of the climate. During the dry season, the courtyard takes on the appearance of the stepwell, with a central pond encircled by steps. A colonnade around its edges creates a public meeting space. This is where visitors can retreat to gain respite from the heat and be cooled by the water, which throws reflections across the courtyard.The monsoon changes the appearance of the courtyard as the floodwaters arrive. Counter-intuitively, the stepped edges of the courtyard are allowed to flood to become an infinity edge pool, while the central space is drained and the ground plane elevated to a flood-free level.

Encircling the courtyard in Mumbai Modern, a gallery that forms the beating heart of the Museum,mediating between the old and the new. The new wing s clad in a veil of red stone that speaks of the history of Indian craftmanship