Hotel MARCO. A project by Michael Lin & rvr arquitectos
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PRESENTATION
‘Hotel MARCO’ as an artistic project
As from April 2011, the MARCO’s Espazo Anexo reshaped itself and underwent its greatest transformation since its aperture in 2004 as a project room, beginning a new period with the proposal ‘Hotel MARCO’, by the artist Michael Lin and rvr arquitectos, which involved transforming the site into a hotel room with a range of uses.
COLLABORATIONS
The project ‘Hotel MARCO’ has been possible thanks to the collaboration during the production stage of eight students of the Fine Arts Faculty of the University of Vigo, selected following a competition testing installation practices; the support of the MARCO Foundation (Iris Margarita Alcaina Patiño, Laura Ilona Arha,
Collaborating companies:
Aguas de Mondariz, Sirvent, Illycafè, Martínez Otero, I.C.O.N-O.P.I, Weber
INFORMATION AND VISITS
From its opening on the 8th April through to the 18th May, the International Museum Day, the project ‘Hotel MARCO’ will be open to the public as an exhibition space at the usual visiting times.
For the time that the Espazo Anexo is open as an exhibition room, gallery staff will be present to answer visitors’ queries and provide information or guided tours:
- Every day at 6pm
- Group-tailored visits by appointment, telephone: 986 113900
Accompanying the project will be a leaflet providing information about the Espazo Anexo’s temporary conversion into a hotel room.
BOOKING AND RATES
Starting 18th May the Espazo Anexo will be used as a hotel room, either as part of the residency programme or for private booking.
Any person or entity wishing to make a reservation or consult available dates must contact
+34 986 113904 / 00
Rates
Price of the room: 100 Euro (tax and breakfast included, at MARCO restaurante&café)
Discount of 50% (50 Euro) for Friends of the MARCO and members of Friends’ Associations who present the blue FEAM card as well as the Friends card of their museum.
HOTEL MARCO - DATASHEET
Total surface of the room:
Enclosures
- Exterior walls: two 20mm-thick superimposed phenolic plywood boards + 15mm-thick gypsum plasterboard. Paint finish in colours S1050-R40B, S1085-Y90R, S0540-R30B, S2060-R40B, S4050-R70B, S2070-G30Y, 0404-G98Y
- Internal partitions: two 20mm-thick superimposed phenolic plywood boards + 15mm-thick gypsum plasterboard. Paint finish in white NCS 0402-G03Y
- Floor: double 20mm-thick phenolic plywood board on pinewood batten. Paint finish in the colours S3060-R70B, S2065-B, S4050-R80B, S4550-R90B. Polyurethane resin coating (Weber)
- Ceiling: 15mm-thick gypsum plasterboard, paint finish in white NCS 0402-G03Y
- Exterior carpentry in aluminium with thermal bridging in colour RAL 7042. Glass (5+5) +12 + (5+5)
- Shower and toilet partition in 8mm sandblasted laminated glazing
Fittings
- Sanitary equipment using the Vythos, Orbita 42 and Element series by Roca, in white, equipped with wall-mounted taps from Roca’s Element series
- Tiles Vilar Albaro, Zafiro Liso Brillo. Ceramics laid with adhesives by Weber from the series weber.col confort
- Air conditioning with single split system LG, UB24–UU24
- General lighting with luminaires equipped with LED lighting and qr 111 with light intensity control. Complementary lighting using luminaires Toio and kelvin LED by Flos [Assistance in the lighting project offered by Ramón Míguez]
- WI-FI throughout the room
- Video projector Hitachi EDX20
- Sound equipment Bose Acustimas 2.1
- Mini-fridge with a
Furniture
- Wardrobe and general container unit made out of MDF board lacquered in shiny white RAL 9003
- Auxiliary table model Twist from the collection mo, Martínez Otero
- Armchair model Egg by Fritz Hansen
- Chair model Mummy by Edra
Textiles
- Vi-spring sleep system, recommended and installed by SIRVENT, set of 250 x 75 pillows
- Bedlinen: A.T. white 260 x 240cm duvet cover, A.T. 180 x 200cm fitted sheet, duvet e. mariola 200g of down, all by La Maison
- Towelling: A.T. 100 x 160cm white bath towel, A.T. 50 x 100cm white hand towel, s. bath mat, all by La Maison
- 100% natural linen curtain in off-white. Window curtain of the type Foscurit 100% polyester
Collaborating companies:
The following companies have collaborated by placing their finest products at the disposal of the clients and users of the Hotel MARCO for the duration of the project:
Aguas de Mondariz
[Natural still or sparkling mineral water, glass bottle, 33cl]
Aguas de Mondariz is quality, health and purity. It is known for its health-promoting qualities, its balanced composition over time, and its unique taste.
illycaffè
[Expresso machine and collectors’ cups]
The Y1 machine of the Metodo Iperespresso unites innovation, design and functionality, combining visual pleasure with the pleasure of the espresso illy. To heighten the experience of a perfect espresso, illy puts at clients’ disposal the collection of illy cups Art Collection designed in 2006 by Michael Lin.
SIRVENT
SIRVENT has recommended and installed the Vi-Spring divan and mattress, representing the perfect basis for relaxation. Experience the perfect support of specially made and selected springs, blended with natural fibres of cocoa and bamboo and the softness of superb fillings such as real Shetland Isle wool, silk and cashmere. Vi-Spring pioneered the pocket spring in 1901, beginning more than a century of the finest bed building. The founding principles of quality and craftsmanship remain their guiding tenets more than 100 years later.
Martínez Otero
[Furniture]
Martínez Otero puts into practice the highest standards of quality and technical and technological expertise, investing much of its time and resources towards making sustained improvements in design, fabrication and the satisfaction of its customers’ needs.
I.C.O.N. - O.P.I
[Cosmetics]
A commitment to imagination, care and style. A renewed focus that embraces the world’s influences and showcases them in packaging, products, practices, collections and in the ever-evolving, shifting perception of beauty.
Weber
[Industrial mortars]
Weber, the world's leading industrial mortar manufacturer offers a complete range of solutions developed using advanced formulation technology to meet the highest technical requirements.
Summary
The Espazo Anexo is a free-standing building on a pedestrian square behind the MARCO that occupies a total surface area of some 100m2. It was inaugurated in 2004 as a projects room, and ever since has housed a multitude of exhibitions and projects, most of which have been individual proposals conceived specifically for the space, drawing on the particular characteristics of the Anexo, notably the way it serves as a sort of transit zone and frontier separating the street and the exhibition space, and exploiting the interior-exterior duality that is characteristic of the site.
April 2011 marks the start of a new period with the opening of ‘Hotel MARCO’, by the artist Michael Lin and rvr arquitectos. It is an innovative project which consists of transforming the Espazo Anexo into a hotel room designed for a range of uses and which takes as its starting point the very structure of the Anexo as well as its connotations and the fruitful dialogue it establishes between the public and private spaces.
Michael Lin (
The idea of the project arose from the opportunity of reforming an existing site and of endowing the museum with an inhabitable space conceived as an artistic project, with the aim of inviting curators, artists and researchers to explore our particular context as part of a programme of residencies. In addition, anyone interested would be able to use it as a hotel room, upon reservation and payment, and enjoy the experience of lodging in an exhibition space conceived as an art work and located both inside and outside the Museum’s premises.
The rational aesthetic behind it, which draws on the idea expounded by the French theorist Nicolas Bourriaud to designate a type of installation in which the experience shared among persons, the work, and reality defines the meaning, facilitates the reading of the space as a work of art, and is understood through the prism of a number of creators of the late eighties and early nineties. The project ‘Hotel MARCO’ is to be understood as a place for social exchange and as “a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context”, as Bourriaud would say.
From its inauguration on the 8th April to the 18th May, the International Museum Day, the place will be accessible to the public during normal visiting hours as an exhibition space. It will be used as a hotel room either as part of the residencies programme or by members of the public.
Artists
Michael Lin
Michael Lin (Tokyo, 1964) is internationally recognised for his huge painted mural-like installations, executed on walls, ceilings, and floors amongst other surfaces, which represent on a grand scale the brightly coloured floral prints of Taiwan and which he conceives as architectural processes that offer new ways of experiencing space through painting, and of seeing art as a social event. He generally uses space (public or private) as a medium in which, to use his own words, “the work becomes a part of the space rather than an object in it”. The painting in his installations transforms our perception of the spaces they occupy, thereby challenging the autonomy of art forms and provoking situations in which viewers can participate directly.
Michael Lin’s work can be described as relational art, which defines aesthetic values as social relations and where communication, interaction and the vital experience of the public in a space shape the basis of the artistic project. Lin affirms himself in his role as social activator by decontextualising his work and introducing it into the realm of immediate reality, and designing interiors, furniture, coffee cups or a tennis court.
Michael Lin’s solo exhibitions include: 2ª Moscow Biennial (2007), Schaurausch-O.K.Centrum, Linz, Austria (2007); Spaces Within, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan (2006); The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii (2005); Lyon Biennial (2005); PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2004); Fundación Montenmedio, NMAC, Cádiz (2003); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2002); Urgent Painting, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris (2002); Asianvibe, EACC, Castellón (2002); Gwanju Biennial Hall, Gwanju, Korea (2002); 49ª Venice Biennale, Taiwan Pavilion (2001); VII Istanbul Biennial (2001); ARS O1, Kiasma Museum, Helsinki, Finland (2001); Casino, Luxemburg (2001); SMAK, Ghent, Belgium (2001) and The Sky Is the Limit, Taipei Biennial, Taipei, Taiwan (2000). Michael Lin lives between Shanghai and Paris.
rvr arquitectos
Studio made up by the architects Alberto Redondo Porto (Vilagarcía de Arousa, 1964), José Valladares Durán (A Estrada, 1966) and Marcial Rodríguez Rodríguez (Valladolid, 1965) which formed at the end of 2002 following several years in which its members worked independently and occasionally with one another as well as with other architects of their generation, at which time they decided it was time they settled down and indulged their professional pursuits rather less promiscuously.
They are the creators of the following works, amongst others: the centre for the interpretation and documentation of Campo Lameiro, Pontevedra; the enhancement of the environs of the Lighthouse of Fisterra (awarded the COAG Prize 2009 for outside spaces); the reform of the square and mirador of Belvís, Santiago de Compostela; the rehabilitation of the southern wing of the Convent of San Domingos de Bonaval for its adaptation as an exhibition space attached to the Museo do Pobo Galego, Santiago de Compostela; the special plan for the protection of the hill-fort of Baroña, Porto do Son; the reform of the Nursing Home of Ferrol; 25 Subsidised Houses in Pontepereda, Santiago de Compostela. Their designs were shortlisted for the 6th European Prize for Landscape Rosa Barba; 4th Enor Arquitecture Prize and 10th Spanish Architecture Biennial. Their work has also been published in reviews such as Obradoiro 33 and Arquitectura COAM 359.
Artist's text
ARTIST’S TEXT
En - A space for climatic, visual and social transactions
“In Japanese culture the term en denotes transaction in three different contexts: in Buddhist morals it refers to the law of Karma, the bridge from cause to effect in the chain of human actions (eg in-en = Karma); in social relations to the bond between different individuals (eg en-musubi = Love bond); and in architecture to the transition from inside to outside, building to nature, private to public (eg en-gawa = verandah).
In all three context en implies connection and/or separation, neither one nor the other alone, but both simultaneously. Ultimately, the uses of en suggest a deeply ambivalent interpretation of man’s being, his social structures and architectural artifacts as being neither simply independent of nor dependent upon, but as being interdependent among each other, ie part of each other.
For this project my interest lay in the creation of a transactional space, an in between space that is connected and/or separate from the private space of the hotel room and the public space of the street. The painting that covers the exterior walls of the hotel room, appropriated from traditional Taiwanese textiles, a foreign culture, but retaining its pre-modern domestic origins, is used to transform the other wise hard edge architectural box into a soft tactile membrane that at once marks out the hotel room as an object separate from the exhibition space and acts on the exhibition space with its colours and foreignness. This in between space that is accessible to the public from the street, welcomes and seduces the passerby to enter into this transaction and/or non-transaction of art and/or non-art”.
Michael Lin
ARCHITECTS’ TEXT
“We see our work for the Hotel MARCO as a reflection on space, both public and private. Or better still, on the space where the two meet. Here, public space is the street, a multiple and social ambit resistent to hierarchies; and private space is the hotel room, which belongs to the body and its actions: rest, personal higiene, thought, perhaps sex. What we, as architects, have chosen to focus our attention on — as, we believe, has Michael Lin done too in his artistic work — is how to prevent street life from interfering with the private and personal life of the room, and how this private space is presented to the outside world.
The physical separation between the street and the room may well be slim — only a few centimetres of insulated board — but it is enough to give the interior space the autonomy necessary to make it inhabitable, in other words, its visual, acoustic and climatic independence of the street space. Thus, the Hotel MARCO bedroom is not conceived as part of the Museum building, but rather as a small building within a larger one, or like a room inside a larger room. Its inside is like a made-to-measure suit, tailored for the person who is going to occupy it for a short time, if only for a night, but who still seeks the warmth and comfort of a fine cloth. In the street, this membrane is pure representation, for its outer walls belong to the city and show themselves to it through the work of Michael Lin.
There is something of a contradiction in the fact of occupying a hotel room, in that we endeavour both to get that feeling of being at home and to procure something that may be missing in our own homes. We are heartened to find some of the privacy we enjoy at home, but also that which our homes are missing or that which we do not have the time to enjoy: hours of sleep in a large and comfortable bed, without the disturbance of noisy neighbours, freshly laundered sheets, the ability to control exactly and conveniently the ambient lighting and heating, a comfortable armchair, an ample bathtub, the right water pressure, soft thick towels… all that makes the body feel good and which we are often unable, perhaps through lack of time, to enjoy. Our proposal for the room sets out to show that all these actions are possible, and to create a space where we can live out the experience of simple luxuries and well-being just mentioned. Thus, the room is not to be understood as a referential or representative space but simply as something conceived for the body and its well-being; and all the things in it — the bed, furniture, bathroom, lights, fabrics — are intended to foment this.
The bedroom is the only room which contains all the basic elements found in a hotel room: an area for rest or work, a bed, and a bathroom. Only a bathtub-cum-wardrobe interrupts the space to lend the bathroom more privacy. All the fittings are found on the wall opposite the entrance, which has a varnished wooden sideboard that encases a desk, the bed, minibar, washbasins, lighting, etc.
Jutting out from the room like cannons are a corridor for the guests’ access — to walk down it is to spend a few seconds on the border between outside (the street) and inside (the room) — and two fanlights: one which connects the room with a fenced section of a small nearby garden, and the other which brings the Vigo skylight to the washbasins area and looks out onto the clock that tops the MARCO’s façade, like a metaphor of the passage of time and of the building’s historical karma”.
r v r arquitectos
Curator
Iñaki Martínez Antelo
Iñaki Martínez Antelo (Santiago de Compostela, 1969) is MARCO, Museo de Arte Contemporánea de Vigo Director from November 18, 2005. He has a B. A. in Contemporary Art History at the Universidad de Santiago de Compostela and a Master’s Degree in Aesthetics and Art Theory at the Institute of Aesthetics attached to the Universidad Autónoma in Madrid. After his period at Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea in Santiago de Compostela (1996-1998), he led the coordination of exhibitions at Auditorio de Galicia (1998-2002) and also coordinated cultural activities at Casa Asia in Barcelona (2002-2003). In 2003, he entered MARCO, Museum of Contemporary Art Vigo, just after being opened, where he has worked as Head of Exhibitions and became director in November 2005. In February 2011 he was elected President of ADACE, Asociación de Directores de Arte Contemporáneo de España.
