Point of departure for our project is the siting of the Prado on a topographical fault line within the city. As a building the Prado has a structure that accrued in layers over time; the structure developed to its present state out of the original core, which dates to the seventeenth century. Parallel to its structural change, the Prado’s urban environment has developed independently of it. In this way it took on the significance of a solitaire in the urban context. Reconnecting the Prado to its surroundings and continuing to emphasize its special position are  fundamental aspects of the concept. The urban approach seeks to redefine this space between the urban fabric and the convent as well as the lowerlying museum building by architecturally interpreting the edge of the terrain through the entrance building to reconcile the different levels and reformulating the urban space with respect to the building massing that rises in the west.

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