Kengo Kuma’s Swooping Canopy Reorients Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian in Lisbon
The extension to Lisbon’s Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian (CAM), designed by Kengo Kuma & Associates, orients a much-adored park and cultural complex in a different direction. This singular foundation—established by the will of oil magnate Calouste Gulbenkian and today one of the world’s largest in its endowment—first acquired a swath of the city’s Santa Gertrudes Park in 1957 to build a museum for the display of its patron’s highly curated collection of pre-modern art.
The design, by a trio of Portuguese architects—Ruy Jervis d’Athouguia, Pedro Cid, and Alberto Pessoa—brought art and nature into immediate proximity within a Modernist pavilion, which contained two internal gardens, and windows that frame the plantings like artworks. Lisboans flocked to this cool refuge set amid laurels, eucalyptus, and poplar.
