Sanaa-led team wins $100m Ecuador museum design after controversy

A new $100 million residence for the Museo Nacional del Ecuador (Muna) in Quito will be designed by a team led by the Japanese architecture firm Sanaa. This decision follows the cancellation of the initial competition results due to backlash on social media, which resulted in the resignation of two cultural officials and the withdrawal of several firms from the reassessment. The project, titled "Living Strata," features overlapping layers with gardens and terraces that extend La Carolina Park and was created in collaboration with Caá Porá Arquitectura, Estudio A0, Jerome Haferd Studio, and Taller Capital Landscape. It originally secured third place in the first competition, which saw the initial winner, "Ecos del sol" by Estudio Campo Baeza and Maoda, annulled on July 10 by infrastructure minister Roberto Luque. Muna's director, Carlos Montalvo, stepped down on July 15. The new selection process included an online public vote with 50,681 participants, contributing 15% to the final score. Architect Alejandro Zaera-Polo, a juror from the first selection, raised concerns about the new design's structural integrity, claiming "it literally cannot stand." Established in 1969, Muna has never had a permanent location and currently displays only a small portion of its 1.2 million artifacts, which span 12,000 years.