FPC

The work creates a sequence that explores the relationship between the artwork and the space, retracing the innovations of exhibit design, from the white cube to the cave space, through the contribution of Italian museography.

The extension of the exhibition spaces within the historical Pasta factory in San Lorenzo is conceived as a first step of a broader plan to transform the spaces of the Foundation. The new areas extend the galleries up to the entrance of the former industrial complex, creating a direct relationship with the street. In this process, the intervention aims to recall the memory of the factory by restoring the iron and wooden structures.

The project carries out a delicate mediation between the restoration of the historic factory’s items and the introduction of contemporary architectural elements. In this sense, the project reinterprets with contemporary shapes the methods for infills and additions of the Roman architecture coming from the Renaissance and Baroque traditions. The project composes small additions, such as a gate – designed around a rediscovered cast iron column, and a hallway – connecting the old and new exhibition spaces. These additions mark the transition between inside and outside, as well as between old and new, creating a unique sequence of spaces.

The halls are reimagined and re-organized along a narrative sequence reflecting on the inventions of the exhibit space, from the white cube to the black box, through the cave space. In the new layout everything is for exhibition: the project gets rid of the traditional separation between served spaces (the public halls) and servant spaces (bathrooms, storage rooms, corridors, etc.). The hallways and all the services become new experimental spaces, where the relationship between the artist’s work and the visitor’s body is explored.

In this way, the thresholds between the halls become unexpected galleries; new intermediate spaces — excavated, subterranean, and residual — capable of hosting site-specific artworks as a tribute to the curatorial work of the Foundation, which over the years has showcased the early XIX century factory as an artwork itself in dialogue with the artists and the public.