Pier Museum

Wherever we go, whatever we do, whoever we meet, we all bring a piece of our native culture with us. These pieces of culture make our world so diverse. But what makes it really unique is the interaction of these different cultures. By taking diverse forms across time and space, even the smallest pieces of culture blend in integrity. Thus, a new cultural value emerges in its entirety.

Pier Museum in Miami is a competition project for a museum/memorial of Latin American immigration in Florida and the USA. The concept of the Pier Museum is conceived as a reflection of the mixture of the pieces of culture that have shaped the everyday life in Miami.

In time, the proposed structure reveals the story of the immigrants who came to these shores in search of the American Dream. The pieces of culture they brought float in the ocean – at first look equal tangible components of alien cultural systems, but at the same time so diverse in their intangible substance. Gradually, as days, months and years pass, they merge together and flourish in a new and richer creative cultural space.

In space, the approach expresses in a tangible way the intangible interaction among two systems: the planned undeviating urban image and the dynamic varied cultural identity. The first one is materialised in the firm geometrical outline. While the intangible nature of culture is given form in the universal element of the sphere – container of diverse ideas. The meeting of these systems creates not a mere patchwork of cultures, but a brand new cultural value born in a process that needs to be manifested.

The museum aims to serve as a tool for cultural mediation by addressing the challenge of promotion of awareness of the positive value of cultural diversity.