Beeline

Taking over the entire Maat building, Beeline is an unprecedented architectural intervention commissioned to the New York-based studio SO-IL. It is the studio’s largest ephemeral architectural work to date and has been designed to host Maat Mode 2020, a six-month-long experimental public program devised by Maat’s new director Beatrice Leanza which seeks to offer, through talks and other events, an open-ended interrogation of the role of cultural institutions in society and in prototyping the museum of the future.

According to the architects, Beeline might trigger a new awareness of our perception of space as well as time. An additional pathway dissects the Maat building both in plan and section. This shortcut connects the riverside entrance directly to a new access point facing the city. This gesture not only transforms the way visitors enter and experience the museum, but also links the formal entrance to a new ‘clandestine’ entrance via the loading dock. As such, this transformation not only opens up the building to new perspectives, but challenges the implied spatial hierarchies of a traditional museum, offering flexibility to an ever-evolving organization.

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