Cultural Heritage
Access to cultural heritage is fundamental to sustaining the legacy of the past, expanding our understanding of the present, and unleashing the potential of our shared future. Machado Silvetti is one of few practices in the United States that specializes in merging innovative and contemporary ideas with existing structures and contexts. We believe that the best way to celebrate our history is to create designs that extend the use of buildings and sites, tell stories in new and accessible ways, and use each opportunity to improve the lives of everyone who interacts with the architecture.
"What we do actually coincides with the recommendations of UNESCO. Our approach is that whatever is new in a project of cultural heritage should be respectful and notable in its difference from the historic setting, so there is no mistake in confusing what is new with what is old.”
– Jorge Silvetti
Stories:
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Menokin Historic Preservation Webinar
Described by Wall Street Journal architectural critic Michael Lewis as, “the most fiercely ambitious historic restoration project in America today,” the project concept proposes to stabilize, preserve and interpret the Menokin House (a National Historic Landmark). Our approach maintains the distinct characters of "old" and "new" and establishes a necessary synergetic relationship between the formal, environmental and structural.
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![Denver Art Museum & Gio Ponti]()
Denver Art Museum & Gio Ponti
The Gio Ponti design building raised the question of the relationships between the future new building and the structure that bears the signature of the ineffable Italian designer’s architectural style, and to which the new structure could be attached and become part of a larger and single functional building. On site we discovered that there were many other critical adjacencies to account for, chiefly three other architectural and urban landmarks, and a large public parking garage.
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![Qasr Al Muwaiji]()
The Ideas and Architecture of Qasr al Muwaiji
The main idea is the fort itself. This is actually a very modest building. Its construction hardly amounts to a building. And in its original context it was practically by itself on the outskirts of the big oasis—defending the oasis
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The Architecture of Cultural Heritage
On November 20, 2015 Jeffry Burchard and Patrick Ruggiero sat down with Jorge Silvetti to discuss the firm’s approach to Cultural heritage, primarily surrounding The Menokin Stabilization, The Getty, Villa, Qasr al Muwaiji projects. Here is a portion of that conversation.
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