Photo credits © Roland Halbe, © Georges Fessy, © L. Filetici
The Macro Museum project is the new wing of the previous museum. Challenge was to both preserve the heritage protected remains of the former brewery and create an extension inserted in a dense nineteenth century city quarter able to open up the museum to the city and procure it visibility.
This urban link is made both through the Foyer on street level, sheltering the red theatre like a precious heart, and the roof terrace directly accessible from the street. Both form a public place in the sense of roman tradition – the glass roof covering the foyer is a fountain; water runs over it, procuring both changing perception of light and reflection in the foyer and a true fountain in the centre of the mineral landscape shaped roof terrace.
The main exhibition room runs around the foyer on one side; it is developed in a non-regular, but simple space given to the artists, offering multiple ways to exhibit and be seen.
The play with level difference between street and existing museum allow creating a variety of connections with both the former museum and the new wing. Between foyer and roof terrace, an inside promenade leads the visitor at mid level through the exhibition space, allowing various ways of perceiving the art works.
This disposal combines urban qualities with unexpected ways of approaching art; the promenade becomes discovery; the limit between institution and city are blurred. The museum has given to its neighbourhood the piazza it missed.