Soto was good friends with Villanueva, who, in his later career beginning with the Venezuelan pavilion at the Montreal Expo in 1967, "tried to formulate architecture of essential features, of the greatest refinement and simplicity". Villanueva in this period felt that buildings were meant to hold things, and wanted to create buildings "without anything useless [...] and so pure that there is no longer an appreciable difference between roofs, walls and natural spaces." One of the buildings of the museum replicates the Montreal Expo pavilion, standing high.