The architectural project for the Alicante Museum of Contemporary Art (MACA) stems from two singular and inherent factors that defined a clear field of action from the outset:

• On one hand, it is a building for a collection of art from the 50s–70s —already established and defined— such as the collection donated to the city by the Spanish artist Eusebio Sempere. The collection comprises works by contemporary artists: Calder, Vasarely, Chillida, Julio González, and Sempere himself.
• On the other hand, the situation in the historic center of Alicante, with its parameters of elevation change (10 m), language, context, or orientation, provides a singular atmosphere, with the presence of the Castle at the top, the sea horizon, or the proximity of the small square and the Church of Santa María.

These two points —the relationship with a world of plastic and perceptive references and the relationship with the context of Alicante’s Historic Center— already suggest a particular way of understanding and developing the project, both in its programmatic and spatial or perceptual resolution.

The use of stone, with a very wall-like (murario) language, enters into a relationship with the conventual language of the Church and the city's historic quarter, as well as integrating, within a single volume, the old “Museo de la Asegurada” building of Alicante, which is rehabilitated and included to house the spaces annexed to the exhibition use.

The stone volume —which absorbs the perimeter elevation— capped with a volumetrically well-defined glass piece, yet broken in its perception by a double transparent skin that breaks the volume with perceptive "moiré" effects and reflections, through a language reclaimed from the kinetic art of the 1950s–1960s.

Internally, the piece is composed of a succession of vertical and horizontal exhibition spaces, allowing the passage of homogeneous North light down to the lower floors through a series of interrelated spaces that maintain their sense of unity and act together through repetition.

• A first horizontal level in continuity with a rhythm of vertical compressions and dilations.
• A second level of transverse rooms that relate to the vertical dilations..
• Finally, the top floor with a horizontal space countered by syncopated vertical and horizontal spaces. This room sews together the three courtyards —black, white, and gold— with three perceptive situations related to the optical games provided by the kinetic artists of the 1960s, brought into the exterior space with their changes of scale and references to the site.
   

Functionally, the building is articulated around a central circulation axis that joins the Asegurada building with the different areas of the new floor plan, both horizontally and vertically.

This main axis divides the building into two clearly differentiated areas, both from a functional and a spatial point of view, such as are the Expository Area, to the East, and the Service Area, to the West.

• The Expository Area, entirely of new construction, contains all the exhibition spaces, the shop, and the multipurpose room on the ground floor, as well as the auditorium on the first basement level.
• The Services Area, to the west, includes the rehabilitation and adaptation of the Asegurada building. This zone houses the lobby and control area on the ground floor, the library on the first floor, and a small administrative and management area on the second floor.
• Also in this zone, but within the newly constructed section, are the internal‑use areas of the Museum, including storage rooms, a security area, workshops, and workspaces.
• Only on the first and third floors does this area include publicly accessible rooms, connected to the exhibition zone and dedicated to the collection.