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District: Nuevo Polanco
Architect: FR-EE Fernando Romero
Build: 2005-11
Floor area: 16,000 m2Photo courtesy Museo Soumaya
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Founded in Mexico in 2000 by Fernando Romeo, FR-EE (Fernando Romero Enterprise) seeks to translate the contemporary moment and culture through architecture, using state of the art materials and technologies, supported by thorough, comprehensive research, and collaboration with other disciplines. In 2010, FR-EE opened an office in New York.
Founder Fernando has won numerous awards, including the Honorary Fellowship by AIA – American Institute of Architects, the Bauhaus Award (2004/2005) and Mexican Society of Architects Award (2009). Romero has lectured at Columbia University, and is a member of the AIA-American Institute of Architects and CAMSAM-Mexican Chamber of Architects.
Opened in 2011 with a great deal of expectation and fanfare, the Museo Soumaya is the showpiece and driver of one of the most extreme urban regeneration schemes in the city’s recent history: an ambitious plan led by Carlos Slim – a telecom tycoon and one of the richest people on the planet – to convert a former industrial site close to the city centre into a thriving residential, commercial and cultural destination. At the heart of the Nuevo Polanco district, the building is surrounded by upscale shopping malls and office buildings, a new aquarium, the Jumex Museum, a theatre designed by Antón García-Abril and soon, the new U.S. Embassy complex. The Soumaya is by far the most staggering of the bunch.
The corset-shaped structure, covered by a metallic honeycomb skin, was designed by Slim’s son-in-law, architect Fernando Romero, to house an eclectic collection of painting, sculpture, decorative arts and antique coins. With its whopping 20,000 square metres of exhibition space, divided over five floors connected by a long spiralling ramp, the inside feels more shopping mall than world class museum. The Soumaya has been shunned by critics, but it has proven pretty popular with the public – particularly as a backdrop for Instagram selfies. I (Mario Ballesteros)
Collage of selfies at Museo Soumaya as published on Instagram
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