A floating museum with a base of 14 concrete pontoons with EPS cores supports a glulam superstructure, both on a six-meter grid ensuring buoyancy, stability, and accommodating technical systems. Solar panels, green roof rainwater reuse, and integrated systems ensure autonomy. Local materials reduce carbon impact and reinforce cultural identity, while castor oil resin protects the wood from humidity. Suspended, adjustable fabrics define flexible, shaded spaces. Docking with fenders, bollards, ramps, and elastomeric tie rods adapts to river conditions, while towboats enable safe relocation, creating a resilient, culturally significant landmark.
The Floating Museum reimagines the Tri-Border region, where Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay meet, as a space of encounter, dialogue, and shared identity. Between flows and shores, where territory dissolves into water and identities emerge through movement, the museum listens to the region’s plural voices and transforms its cultural and geographical tensions into opportunities for connection.
Despite the intense exchange of people, goods, and experiences across the borders, symbolic and institutional fragmentation persists, reflected in the absence of spaces that represent the region’s diversity or foster belonging. This project responds by proposing an architecture that transcends political boundaries, celebrates differences, and integrates urban and natural landscapes through the Paraná and Iguaçu rivers, taken as neutral and unifying elements.
In a context marked not only by diversity but also by episodes of intolerance, xenophobia, and the marginalization of certain groups, the need for spaces of encounter becomes even more urgent. The museum acknowledges the challenges of coexistence in a region where cultural richness often contrasts with social exclusion and prejudice. By offering a platform for visibility, dialogue, and shared narratives, the project confronts these tensions and reaffirms diversity as a value, encouraging empathy, understanding, and a sense of collective belonging.
The museum is conceived as a moving, floating pavilion that docks at six selected points across the three countries, leveraging existing port infrastructure without invasive interventions. These choices respect urban dynamics while strengthening symbolic and functional connections between the nations.
Inspired by traditional riverboats, the design honors the memory of fluvial journeys that historically connected the region, while functioning as a floating observatory offering panoramic views and direct engagement with water.
Three interconnected volumes, built on a common base, symbolically represent the three nations. Their staggered platforms, inspired by the cascading geometry of the Iguaçu Falls, evoke the fluidity of relationships in the borderlands. The open, adaptable program includes spaces for exhibitions, workshops, performances, contemplation, and community events. Perforated bleachers promote natural cross-ventilation and serve as informal gathering points, while open platforms encourage the circulation of knowledge and celebration of local cultural expression.
Rooted in the region’s specificities, the project prioritizes accessibility, inclusion, local materials, traditional knowledge, and sustainable strategies.
By proposing a structure in motion, the Floating Museum challenges fixed notions of borders and identity, offering an architecture that celebrates diversity, fosters proximity, and reaffirms culture as a link between nations, transforming the rivers from lines of division into connectors of shared memories, traditions, and futures.
