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Architects: Labics
- Area: 3311 m²
- Year: 2023
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Photographs:Marco Cappelletti
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Manufacturers: Arcadia Custom, Buozzi, Mogs, Mornico Legnami , Technologica, Viabizzuno, Visual, Zumtobel, iMartini
Text description provided by the architects. The project for the Palazzo dei Diamanti consists of an organic series of interventions aimed on the one hand at the restoration and enhancement of the sixteenth-century complex and on the other at the adaptation of the exhibition spaces and exteriors. The project is driven by the belief that architecture, unlike painting, sculpture, or other forms of art, is a living art that cannot only be contemplated in its beauty; an art which, in order to continue to exist, must be enjoyed and, if necessary, reinterpreted as it has always been in the history of architecture.
The first intervention concerned the main pre-existing exhibition areas, the so-called Rossetti and Tisi wings. All the rooms have been equipped with new highly technological surfaces, behind which the plant equipment is hidden. The new linings, which cover the ancient walls so as not to alter their consistency, conceal the latest-generation systems capable of guaranteeing the thermo-hygrometric performance required of a contemporary art museum. In the Rossetti wing, new Venetian terrazzo floors were created and new portals in burnished brass were inserted in both wings, emphasizing the spatial sequence of the Renaissance palace.
The second intervention took into consideration the rooms of the former Risorgimento Museum, completely restored, where new functions have been allocated to support the exhibition activity: a cafeteria, a bookshop, a teaching room, and a multipurpose room. To complement this part, the internal courtyards have been requalified by equipping them with new terracotta floors: interpreted as real open-air rooms, these places have become an integral part of the museum itinerary, thus enhancing the peculiarity of the Palace which alternates full and voids, indoor spaces and confined outdoor spaces.
The third intervention concerned the continuity of the routes - a central theme for exhibition space - both inside and outside. The most important of those interventions is the creation of the garden of the connection between the two wings of the Palace. As is known, the main body of the building has an open planimetric development, equipped with a main courtyard, contiguous to the access loggia, which directly overlooks the rear garden (originally the orchard) filtered only by a two-dimensional diaphragm which performs the role of the perspective backdrop. The new connection project between the two wings, whose prediction already appears in the eighteenth-century prints by Bolzoni, consists of a light, trilithic, essential structure, made of wood - only partially closed by the glass - which extends into the garden, emphasizing its main geometries.
In line with the spatial structure of the Palazzo – characterized by an alternation of solids and voids – the new intervention defines new open-air rooms in the garden, which extend its logic by amplifying its sequence. The structure, in charred wood, is able to ensure good durability and low maintenance; the sliding glass curtain walls, which protect the path in the less favorable seasons, allow for complete opening in order to restore physical continuity between the Renaissance courtyard and the rear garden. The new structure, in fact, not only connects the two wings of the building but belongs, precisely because of its ephemeral nature, to the garden, which has also been completely redeveloped.
