MuNa/projects/ecuador-museum/ref/project-chassis.md

# Project Chassis — Shared Invariants for All Narratives

This document distills the fixed design facts that all four stakeholder
narratives (`narratives/01-visitor.md` through `narratives/04-community.md`)
must be consistent with. It is not itself a narrative — it is the settled
reference the narratives draw on so that a detail mentioned by one
stakeholder (a material, a color, a named place, where a collection lives)
is never contradicted by another.

Primary source: `ref/Casa de la Memoria Andina - National Museum
Narrative-Kimi.txt` (Nikos Salingaros), which already fixes most of these
invariants and supplies the Visitor narrative's own prose almost wholesale.
Secondary sources: `ref/brief-condensed.md` (official brief facts) and
`ref/critique-failures.md` (named failures to steer clear of).

---

## 1. Fixed facts (already set by Salingaros's document — do not re-derive)

**Site area**: see §4 below for the settled figure to cite.

**Building envelope**: minimum 25,000 m² arranged on four principal levels
of approx. 6,250 m² each; footprint under 50% of the site.

**Building complex** (pattern 95 Building Complex / 99 Main Building):
- Archaeological wing
- Historical wing
- Artistic wing
- Temporary-exhibition and education wing
- A taller central building housing the Great Hall (pattern 99 Main
  Building) — the institutional "head" toward which all roofs and paths
  converge.

**Materials strata** (tectonic sequence, base to crown):
1. Dark Ecuadorian andesite at the plinth, steps, portal, and principal
   structural frames.
2. Thick limewashed tapial and adobe at the lower/middle levels.
3. Lighter bahareque and timber in the upper galleries, gables, balconies,
   and sheltered internal façades.
4. Red-brown clay tile roofs with deep aleros (eaves) throughout.

**Color system — CR1 "Quito White & Andesite"**: matte lime-white wall
fields; andesite at plinth/steps/portal/frames; dark walnut carpentry;
natural red-brown roof tile; near-black wrought iron (rejas); a restrained
oxblood zócalo on selected lower walls only. Color is concentrated on doors,
windows, rails, and chosen interior elements — never spread indiscriminately.

**Ornament system — OP2 "Chakana and Diamond Course"**, concentrated at
base, threshold, and crown only (never as surface decoration across whole
walls): diamond-coursed masonry banding in the andesite plinth; stepped
chakana-derived profiles on stair edges, portal mouldings, metal grilles,
door pulls, and a small number of cornice transitions — made through
masonry bonding, timber joinery, perforation, and shadow, never applied
graphics. Ornament density increases toward the entrance portal and
subsides once past it, so patios and galleries stay calm.

**OP4 "Quiteño Retablo Episode"** — exactly one contained figurative wall,
inside the Great Hall: a tiered field of niches and frames holding
abstracted sun and moon discs, maize, Andean flowers, birds, and animal
forms, integrated with the orientation desk, stair landing, and the first
objects of the collection. This is the single deliberate concentration of
figurative ornament in the entire building — every other major wall stays
calm. **No narrative may introduce a second figurative episode elsewhere**;
that would violate OP4's own "one contained episode" discipline.

**Entrance sequence**: street → Civic Atrio (raised forecourt, ceremonial
steps, activity pockets, screened parking) → entrance portal (five-bay
stone composition, ornament density peaks here) → zaguán (cool, dim,
acoustically hushed transition passage) → Patio of Origins (first sunlit
realm). This sequence is staged and bodily and reverses exactly on
departure.

**Equatorial sun-capture (resolves pattern-subset gap)**: the pattern
subset's own "South Facing Outdoors" (105) and "Indoor Sunlight" (128)
patterns assume a temperate-latitude sun that rakes from the south — this
does not describe Quito, which sits almost exactly on the equator, where
the sun passes near zenith at midday year-round rather than favoring one
compass-facing façade. Salingaros's document resolves this correctly: the
Patio of Origins is "proportioned so that the high equatorial sun reaches
the paving and planting while the surrounding corredores remain in shade."
**All narratives should describe sun-capture through courtyard proportion
and high-sun geometry, not through literal south-facing orientation.** This
is also the chassis's direct rebuttal of failure #9 in
`ref/critique-failures.md` (the winning proposal's unrealized "sun
protagonist" rhetoric) — here the sun-claim is geometrically real and
checkable against the plan.

---

## 2. Named-realm mapping (gap closed)

Salingaros's document names six circulation realms — Civic Atrio → Patio of
Origins → Great Hall → Corredor of Time → Patio of Memory → Garden of the
Arts — but its narrative body only explicitly ties the first three to their
names; the historical- and artistic-wing passages describe content without
naming the realm. This chassis pins down the remaining mapping so all
narratives can use realm names consistently:

| Named realm | Wing / content it denotes | Textual basis |
|---|---|---|
| **Civic Atrio** | The raised public forecourt at street level | Explicit in source text |
| **Patio of Origins** | First courtyard; opens off entrance hall, archaeological galleries, café, education rooms | Explicit in source text |
| **Great Hall** | The central taller building; institutional heart, main staircase | Explicit in source text |
| **Corredor of Time** | The historical wing's chronological gallery route — "the earthen middle of the building," colonial through republican and modern national life, with periodic common-room expansions | Matches "route is chronological... expands into a common room... where groups can rest and rejoin" |
| **Patio of Memory** | The courtyard serving the historical wing / archive-and-library zone — a place of rest and reflection adjacent to the documentary collections | Thematically paired with "memory" = archive/documentary material; positioned as the historical wing's own courtyard, distinct from the Patio of Origins (archaeology) and any artistic-wing garden |
| **Garden of the Arts** | The garden/courtyard the artistic wing's recessed balconies and balcón corrido overlook, near the roofed mirador | Matches "galleries open toward recessed balconies and a balcón corrido overlooking the principal patio... a sunny garden" in the Edges/courts/gardens passage |

This mapping is a considered completion, not a re-invention: it follows the
thematic logic already present in the source prose (time/chronology →
historical wing's route; memory/documents → historical wing's rest-court;
arts → artistic wing's garden) rather than assigning names arbitrarily.

---

## 3. Collection-reserve placement (gap closed)

The official brief organizes the National Collection into **five** reserves
(`ref/brief-condensed.md`); Salingaros's document only names **three**
collection wings. This chassis settles where all five reserves live:

| Reserve (brief) | Building location |
|---|---|
| **Archaeology Reserve** (62,103 pieces) | Archaeological wing — the lowest, heaviest realm (dark stone, cool, quiet rooms), opening onto the Patio of Origins |
| **Colonial and Republican Reserve** (5,353 pieces) | Historical wing / Corredor of Time — "colonial Quito through republican... national life" is exactly this reserve's period range |
| **Modern and Contemporary Art Reserve** (2,538 works) | Artistic wing / Garden of the Arts — "the light timber crown," Ecuador's 20th–21st-century art |
| **Human Sciences Library** (~210,000 items, incl. Jijón y Caamaño and Isaac Barrera collections) | A dedicated reading room / study center adjacent to the historical wing, opening onto the **Patio of Memory** — publicly accessible (not storage-only), giving researchers and the curious a real room to sit in, not an abstract adjunct to the galleries |
| **Historical Archive** (918,673 documents) | Conservation-and-study spaces adjacent to the historical wing / Patio of Memory, alongside the Human Sciences Library — this is where the manuscripts, photographs, musical scores, recordings, cartography, and posters are held and consulted |

This placement directly answers the brief's own framing that the museum
"currently exhibits less than 1% of its collection" (`ref/brief-condensed.md`
§1): the Human Sciences Library and Historical Archive, previously invisible
adjuncts, now have a named, inhabited place — the Patio of Memory precinct —
rather than disappearing into an unlabeled "historical wing." The Staff
narrative (librarians, archivists, conservators) and the Community narrative
(researchers, heritage-community members consulting patrimonial material)
should both describe this precinct concretely.

---

## 4. Site-area figure (discrepancy resolved)

`ref/brief-condensed.md` flagged a rounding difference: the official brief
states **13,004.65 m²**; Salingaros's document rounds this to **"13,000
m²"** in its project-parameters table and again in spoken discussion in
`ref/youtube-transcript.txt` ("the entire site is 13,000"). Both describe
the same plot — this is rounding, not a conflicting claim.

**Decision**: new narrative prose (all four stakeholder files) should cite
the official **13,004.65 m²** figure when precision matters (e.g. stating
site data plainly), but conversational or scene-setting references may use
"about 13,000 m²" the way Salingaros's own prose does. Do not alter
Salingaros's existing narrative text to "correct" this — per
`ecuador-7vi.1`'s adaptation principle, maximum reuse of his prose, no
unnecessary rewriting of a rounding difference that isn't actually wrong.

---

## 5. Failures actively avoided (cross-reference to `ref/critique-failures.md`)

| Failure (critique transcript) | How this chassis avoids it |
|---|---|
| #1 Illegible/invisible entrance | Explicit five-bay portal, staged entrance sequence, Entrance Room at the Great Hall's perimeter |
| #2 Blank "avoidant" facades | OP2 ornament concentrated at base/threshold/crown, CR1 warm color system, small-paned glazing |
| #3 Monolithic mass | Building complex of five named wings/hall, not a single undifferentiated volume |
| #4 Disconnected from urban context | Civic Atrio graduates city scale to institutional scale; screened parking keeps street frontage active |
| #5 Parking dominance | Parking screened behind planted walls/secondary wings, subordinate to the entrance portal's visibility |
| #6 No courtyards/landscaping | Patio of Origins, Patio of Memory, Garden of the Arts — three named, planted, water-active courts |
| #7 Inhuman scale | Great Hall's perimeter "drops to a human register"; six-foot-plus balconies; narrow wings (max width per pattern 107) |
| #8 All-concrete, no color | CR1/OP2 systems plus Ecuadorian Form Language Grammar vocabulary (tapial, adobe, bahareque, timber) |
| #9 Hollow "sun" rhetoric | Sun-capture is geometrically real: courtyard proportion tuned to equatorial high-sun, not a rhetorical claim |
| #10 Illegible circulation | Six named, sequential circulation realms; building thoroughfares 4.5–6 m wide; staircase as stage |
| #11 Dead, unsupervised edges | Building Edge/Activity Pockets: arcades, activity pockets, and inhabited edge-thickness line every court and street frontage |

---

## Notes for narrative authors

- Quote or closely paraphrase Salingaros's existing prose where it already
  covers a stakeholder's experience (this is explicit for the Visitor
  narrative per `ecuador-7vi.1`) — do not invent new materials, colors, or
  spatial names not present in this chassis or the pattern subset.
- Every design claim in every narrative must trace to: a pattern in
  `ref/A Pattern Language Ecuador National Museum.md`, a fact in
  `ref/brief-condensed.md`, an element of
  `ref/Ecuadorian_Form_Language_Grammar.md`, or this chassis document.
  Anything else is a hallucination to be caught at the cross-check stage
  (`ecuador-7vi.5`).