Two different architectures, two different ideas about what a museum is and what it means, two different technical and conceptual requirements, two different times and needs. In short, two different Gold Museums, but sharing a common ingredient: the same designer, architect Germán Samper.

This is why the only feature of the frontage that remains is the marble overlay, which unifies the two buildings. The museum retains its heavy structure, which makes it look like a chest or a treasure trove that cannot be exposed in a building that denotes frailty, as it would if it were made of glass, as so many buildings are today. On the other hand, the solid frontage makes way inside for a glass museum, one where the only colour that can be seen is the gold of the numerous objects.

From the pure prism of the original four-storey building to a functional one of nine floors above ground and a further three underground, linking the museum and its permanent and temporary exhibition rooms to the recording areas, vaults, and the administration and security systems. A rigorous coupling of architecture to the concept of "smart" engineering, by creating the facilities for cable runs, air flow sources, an anti-seismic structure, furniture and fittings, rooms with automatic controls, storerooms and vaults to all come together in a single structure.

Because, contradictory though it might seem, what this new building seeks to do is to "de-architecturalise space", as architect Germán Samper and the whole Gold Museum team can vouch for. As in 1968, the aim is not that the actual building should catch people's attention. There is no intention that the frontage should create a picture postcard background, but rather that a history of the past, our history, should be protected. What the architecture, or rather the lack of it, therefore seeks to do is to ensure that the objects themselves enjoy pride of place. And this is something you appreciate as you walk through the museum. Because in order to sense the architecture you will have to move, to feel its internal rhythm, its language, its silences, its moments of meditation, its breathing.

From rising to learning by going up the monumental staircase of the modern building to the horizontal nature of knowledge in that new building. Solutions that are found through the needs of the times.

Modern museum technology has confined to the past the stiff and stagnant appearance and institutional nature that an environment of wooden walls, brown carpets, wooden windows and yellow bulbs produces, as this is not suitable for a present-day museographical display, where the object deserves the visitor's whole attention, not the furniture that is used for displaying it.

What is therefore to be done so that the object, which is really what the museum wants to exhibit, is seen in its true dimension? The answer is to use museographical aids: illumination, texts, showcases and supporting material. Because the essential thing that has to be done here is to make the furniture disappear, so that it is the gold, pottery, stone or textile object that catches the visitor's eye.

Similarly, the figure at the museum entrance has been taken down, in order to eliminate the literal fact. Because this is really the biggest change the museum will undergo: no longer will it be a place that attempts to recreate past events, reproducing them as they might have been, since it will now, rather, be a museum which suggests how that past might have been. The change is thus from the literal to the allusion.

A start has therefore been made on a process of reflection on the archaeological collection: viewing it as an object, touching and feeling it, examining it, associating it. This process has benefited from the valuable advice of architect Roberto Benavente, a museography specialist responsible for projects like the Natural History Museum in Paris and the French National Museum of Prehistory.

Because this type of question meant rethinking the way objects are exhibited, how they are hung, or supported. From nylon thread to invisible supports, via a whole transformation in the subject of lighting, where no longer will it be necessary to open up a showcase in order to change a bulb, where there are no risks to the collection, where it will rather be highlighted.

Patterns thus emerged, gradually and methodologically, for the museum's showcases, typography, graphic design and signposting, the computerisation of exhibits, supports, and lighting.

However, the challenge that the Gold Museum's museography team took on was to become an interlocutor for all these possibilities that other countries were offering in the field of technology.

One of the fundamental elements that was studied was thus showcase design. Colombian companies were turned to in the search for a museographical system that was efficient in terms of both preventive conservation of the different objects and the logistics and administrative control of the collection (previously, for example, it took seven people to open a showcase - museography and security personnel and people to handle the glass -, whereas now, one person will be able to do everything).

The result of this learning process was an ongoing development of new techniques from the traditional systems of using and mechanising metal materials and long-lasting coatings, and strict supervision has brought a highly satisfactory result, one which will ensure optimum conditions for preserving the collection and keeping it safe.

Now, once the new showcase had been created, attention needed to turn to what was to be displayed inside it; in other words, how the objects were to be arranged in order to get the message across that the scientific script wanted to express, the specific, orderly pattern of a tour which follows the geographical locations of the different goldwork cultures, commencing in the south of the country, heading up to the north coast, and ending with the Muisca culture.

Different stages were involved in the methodology that was used for studying the objects and positioning them in the showcases. Initially, based on the selection made by the archaeologists, a layout for the different objects was established on a computer screen, after which such matters as density, distribution, hierarchies and quantity were looked at, and an initial image was produced; this was immediately followed by a horizontal pre-assembly of the chosen items, when the different tones of the objects were evaluated, along with their shine and textures, and positions were changed as necessary. Next, a pre-assembly was carried out in a full-size, prototype showcase, which showed the objects in their real positions and allowed the extent to which the support for each one needed to turn or move to be determined. This enabled the requirements for each object in terms of bases, shelves and special supports to be established, and this work was always done in the presence of the curators responsible for the respective study areas.

An acrylic background has been used in the showcases, partly because this material does not react over a period of time, but mainly in order to eliminate the concepts of opacity and density that surrounded the objects, and to replace these with a feeling of lightness and a sensation that each object floats. The museum will thus gradually become a glass one, where only the objects in the collection provide colour and landscape. And the ergonomic design of the showcases means that only the object can be seen.

But a novel system of supports had to be implemented before the objects could take on this "floating" sensation, a system which did away with the traditional nylon thread that supported the items from above, creating a false sense of invisibility and interfering with the way they could be viewed. The advice was thus sought of Marc Jeanclos, who developed the support technique that is currently used by the Louvre, Natural History, and Science and Technology Museums in Paris, and the new rooms at the museum will accordingly use long, stainless steel rods that "embrace" the objects from behind, thereby eliminating any interference when they are being looked at. This means they will be further away from the bottom, and because they will be lit from various angles, it will be possible to stress their aesthetic qualities and features and achieve the "floating" effect. This technology has been fully developed here in Colombia, where each object is unique and therefore requires a support that has been designed exclusively for it. More than 6,500 supports will be available for the first stage of the museum.

In new architectural aesthetics, the skin of materials is fundamental, for it is the expression of those materials; nothing is covered, everything is concise and succinct. Because there is a fundamental premise behind this: to eliminate representation in order to extend the levels of allusion. And modern graphic design proposals abide by this new "skin".

The question which thus arose in the museology field, in connection with settings that have disappeared over periods of hundreds of years and which we attempt to revive through representations where we are not even sure whether they are true and correct or not, was how to do away with models of something non-existent, of a ritual that it is impossible to see today. Here lies the basis for the allusion and suggestion scenario on which the new Gold Museum is based. Because reproducing a scene that really exists, like Altamira Cave or the Tierradentro hypogeum, is vastly different from recreating a ritual for which nowadays there is nothing more than references.

Paradoxically, the example that has been taken for studying how efficient a construction is with respect to its environment is the igloo. The new museum building will therefore be a smart one, which employs technology in an attempt to control certain environmental features of buildings and make them more rational in terms of energy use, and to guarantee higher safety levels not only for visitors and the people that work in them, but also for the material goods they cover.

In line with this idea, the museum building boasts electronic control rooms, for security, museum automation, and building automation purposes. All these areas are independent, and although they are linked together by the system, they have different programming arrangements and needs, relating to protecting the collection, managing the rooms in the museum, and controlling administration area floors.

One point they all have in common is the air conditioning system, which has controllers for savings purposes, maintains a constant air temperature, and boasts an air regeneration system. Air conditioning levels are, of course, programmed differently for offices and rooms where hundreds of people circulate. Similarly, lighting controls and automation are governed by timetable and presence control strategies.

Fire detection systems meet the country's Icontec standards and are in line with worldwide needs. When evacuation routes were being drawn up, sufficient corridor and staircase widths, the size of evacuation doors, sensor type and how alarms should sound, were all factors that were taken into consideration. In addition to electronic security, there are also opening detectors, movement sensors, alarms and cameras, to which must be added the fact that the vaults boast air locks.

Two systems control the lighting of the reinforced showcases in the control room: fluorescent tubes, the sole purpose of which is to create an atmosphere for the objects, and distance-operated optic fibre lighting: This means that the showcase should never be opened for any reason, and the latter type of lighting also gives off a cold light, which does not heat objects up and therefore damage them. Electricity is controlled in passageways by means of dimmers, a light attenuation system which moderates brightness and reflections in the showcases.

Special showcases that contain organic material, fabrics or wood have controlled environmental conditions (temperature and humidity) to ensure that the objects are preserved correctly. This method is much simpler to use than the data loggers that were employed previously, which were enclosed inside the showcases and recorded the corresponding environmental conditions but did not report movements in the register. This is why a PLC is being used today, a programmable logic controller which not only controls light, temperature and humidity but also switches on the air conditioning, thereby eliminating the need for showcases to be opened and closed.

Bogotá fortunately enjoys a climate that is ideal for preserving the collections, and temperature changes are therefore not considered to be a problem for the different objects. Historical records are nevertheless kept of the city's weather, so that peaks at different times of the year can be analysed and preparations made for any eventuality in the rooms, which are anyway climate-controlled.

Plasma screens will be available to provide audio-visual support in the two small rooms adjacent to the permanent exhibition rooms and the auditorium, and the outstanding image quality these offer will mean that it will be possible for the more than 2,000 films and documentaries that the museum possesses to be enjoyed to the full. Digital reproducers will also allow a tape to be shown time and again without any fear of it getting damaged by the digital system it is in.