Visitors enter a museum of energy near a nuclear power plant in Spain through a curved wall of light.

Designed by Girona studio Arquitecturia, the museum near Tarragona is wrapped in vertical lengths of black-painted steel and features a tall window framing a central row of double-height rooms.

Two curved terraces dissect the rectangular plan to create the two concave walls, which are clad in translucent polycarbonate.

Lights inside the museum cause these two walls to glow after dark.

The single-storey museum contains an exhibition hall, lecture room and meeting rooms, all accessedfrom a foyer at the front of the building.

Other buildings on Dezeen that feature translucent glowing walls include a museum of glass in the Netherlands and a business training centre in Italy.

Photography is by Pedro Pegenaute.

Museum of Energy by Arquitecturia

This SITE

Desolate land, landscape and industry not related, simply juxtaposed, they coexist without tension.

Here, in this place, the boundary condition is strongly felt.

Uncomfortable, there is no shelter.

Between the Ebro and the topography, between industry and the urban settlement.

The need to anchor this place is strong.

We start dusting off the GRID

On the blank paper, a square 42 x 42, abstract, perimeter without references.

On the Square, an orthogonal grid, rows interval: A A B A A, columns interval: a b a a b a

On the Grid, B divides the square into two, between the receiving space and the space of exhibition, B articulates, B is circulation and transition.

On the Grid, the type, a b a a b a modulate and order, programmatic conditions.

The TYPE on this SITE

The type on this site, lost purity, now, it emanates a sense of belonging, intertwined abstraction and specificity.

XY are no axes anymore but coordinates, two structural directions.

East west, landscape, the Ebre river and topography.

North south, artifice, industry and the town of Ascó.

From outside to inside, accidental spaces, subtracted MATTER, emptiness is absence, the interior is revealed.

STEEL outside - regular perimeter, dense heavy precise, dark cold rough

POLYCARBONATE inside, winding subtraction, ethereal light sinuose, bright smooth soft

Click above for larger image

Authors: Josep Camps + Olga Felip
Colab: M. Agudo, I. Sola, A. Horta, J. Farres, A. Serrats
Client: ANACNV

Click above for larger image

Engineery: PROINTEC
Structure: GMKgrup
Constructor: TCSA