LA CITE DES CULTURES D’ITALIE

STARTT wins the competition “Le ali ritrovate dell’Hôtel de Galliffet” for the extension of the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris: the project is a tribute to the model of the Italian and European city articulated around public spaces for the production and sharing of knowledge, arts and culture.

LA CITÉ DES CULTURES D’ITALIE is the winning project in the restricted competition “Le ali ritrovate dell’Hôtel de Galliffet” for the extension of the Italian Cultural Institute of Paris.
The competition site involves the entire complex of the Hôtel de Galliffet, a monumental building from the end of the 18th century and headquarters of the Talleyrand ministry during the French Revolution, which lost its original relationship with the urban context following Haussmann’s transformations. The Hôtel is now set within the urban block and bounded by the blind back of the surrounding buildings which encloses its exterior spaces.
The project proposes a systemic solution for the whole compound: the new wings, the historic building and the public parterre. This layout is articulated through a large public space on two levels (the outdoor mineral piazza and the foyer des cultures in the basement) which distributes the program of the centre by independent functional blocks. The historic building is used for institutional roles; the new wings house classrooms for language and kitchen courses, offices and the Hôtel d’Italie. The residences for artists are spread throughout the different buildings.

The landscape design is structured to achieve the environmental sustainability goals of “Paris vert” and of the Paris 2020 Protocol, to prevent urban warming and increase green surfaces in the historical city.
The foyer des cultures is the focus of the project, a large flexible space divided into three main areas: the exhibition/atrium space, the auditorium and the office block. Thanks to the use of mobile partitions, the foyer can take on different configurations at the same time, according to the events of the Institute’s cultural schedule. Its reconfigurability allows a full use of the space for festivals, exhibitions and large performance events.
The Cité des Cultures d’Italie wants to be a tribute to the model of the Italian -and European- city, organised around its public spaces, as places for sharing and producing knowledge: art, applied arts, industry and culture in its various forms.