Palazzo Massari

Ferrara - Italy

Type

  • Culture

Location

  • Ferrara - Italy

Year

  • 2017 - ongoing

Client

  • Municipality of Ferrara

Activities

  • Final and executive design, safety coordination during the design phase, works management

Costs

  • 9.6 M euro

Area

  • 8.140 m2

The project follows the guidelines of the tender preliminary design and has been modified during the drafting of the executive design. The designed exhibition building has been replaced by a glassed-in staircase for the visitors’ flows.  

The most significant interventions are the new cafeteria, the bookshop, the ticket office and the new vertical and horizontal connection systems. The space of the ticket office and the entrance, characterised by the verticality of the basin, is re-proposed by transforming the old small cloister, illuminated by the light coming from the glass window at the top. The horizontal part of the glazing houses a new set of photovoltaic panels. This intervention is marked by maximum linearity and constructive simplicity, through the alternation of metal uprights and glazed portions.

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The cafeteria is entirely redesigned by the new structural layout, and is enriched with a new spatiality determined by the reopening of the historical arcades facing the park and the loggia. The new volume of the monumental staircase characterises the north façade and introduces an element of renewed identity in the physical context of the building. The new staircase is enclosed by a glazed volume, screened towards the park by a 'textile' system of metal cables and glazed ceramic slabs. The same cladding characterises the new office portions of the east wing. The entire exhibition sequence of the frescoed rooms will be restored and rearranged, allowing the unification of the route through a new walkway. The cancellation of the incongruous 'break' represented by the 20th-century fence allows the garden to be reconnected with the entire Massari park. A new central path through the flowerbed front binds the atrium to the garden; a path of memory, re-proposing the ancient lost axiality.