MAC Panama

MAC Panamá — International Design Competition Entry

This project was our submission to the Concurso Abierto Internacional de Carácter Privado para el Diseño Arquitectónico de la Nueva sede del Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Panamá, the international open competition for the design of the new headquarters of Panama's Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC).

The competition called for a new home for an institution that has, for sixty years, made contemporary art accessible to all Panamanians. The site sits in Punta Pacífica, Panama City, between the glass towers of the financial district and the neighbouring community of Boca La Caja, on the retained mat foundation of an abandoned mega-project.

Submitted by Stefan Shaw Studio (London) as lead architect, with structural engineering by AKT II, our Phase 1 entry proposes a building that settles into the ground rather than rising above it.

Design Intent

Life in Panama City is rarely singular, and this design proposal for a new Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) in Punta Pacífica, submitted in March 2026, refuses to be either.

Rather than a conventional landmark, the museum is conceived as a civic landscape rooted in the ground and shaped by Panama's climate, culture, and contradictions. Where the surrounding towers dissolve into sky, the building settles into the earth, asserting itself through mass, shadow, and material depth. It repurposes an existing mat foundation, originally engineered for high-rise towers, as a ready-made civic platform, with all operational functions (parking, storage, art handling, services) absorbed into the basement so that every floor above is given over entirely to public and cultural life.

At street level the building opens into a shaded plaza animated by a water feature that doubles as a passive cooling system, flanked by independent commercial units that activate the edges and support long-term financial sustainability. Visitors don't arrive at a door but into an atmosphere. Inside, a central atrium rises through the full height of the building, acting as both social spine and thermal chimney, with galleries, workshops, an archive, and educational spaces opening visibly onto public circulation routes, so that learning, making, and participation are woven into the daily life of the building rather than hidden away.

Climate is treated as the primary design material throughout: deep overhangs, angled facades, planted terraces of native species, and rainwater harvesting all work together to passively cool and sustain the building. The material palette is regional and disciplined, with precast concrete pigmented to the warm grey-brown of Panama's geology, locally sourced basalt aggregate, and reclaimed Panamanian hardwood in the atrium and education spaces. The proposal targets delivery within $20 million across 10,185 m².

The overarching ambition is a museum that belongs to Panama City's communities as much as to the institution that has, for decades, kept contemporary art alive in Panama: a landscape to be claimed, not a monument to be admired.