A museum's second life

This article was published in Domus 947/May 2011

There are built stories so emblematic of the socioeconomic and cultural changes underway that it would be a pity not to tell them. The main task of architecture criticism should be to identify works and projects whose contents, with the strength of their micro-stories, can be universalised. Cino Zucchi's recent renovation of the National Automobile Museum in Turin is a perfect opportunity to think about both the current situation in Italian architecture as well as some of its possible developments.

Designed by Amedeo Albertini, the museum was founded in 1960 in one of the most symbolic areas of contemporary Turin. In 1961, the Universal Labour Exposition was organised in this district as part of the celebrations for the centennial of Italian unification, creating a new zone in the southeast part of the city. The design of the area is still impressive; at the time it was suffused in all the optimistic rhetoric of an economic boom in full swing, with a GDP growth rate reaching almost double digits. The Labour Building, designed by Pierluigi and Antonio Nervi with Gio Ponti, and the Palazzo a Vela by Franco Levi with Annibale and Giorgio Rigotti were the major works in a system of pavilions connected by a monorail running for nearly two kilometres along the bank of the River Po. This episode was recognised as one of the most successful and creative moments in the relationship between architectural design and engineering in Italy.

The National Automobile Museum was established on the southern edge of the Expo district. It contained a rich collection dating from the beginning of the century, but above all it exalted that most dramatic, desired and widespread symbol of the Italian economic boom: the car (one of those objects of desire that underpinned the fortune and social epic of the national revolution). The car was celebrated in Albertini's boldly conceived structure, substantiated by its long curved glass facade gliding along the new Corso Unità d'Italia "parkway".

After the roaring success of Expo '61 with its four million visitors, the exhibition area underwent a "normal" Italian-style evolution. Too large to maintain its original function, the area was progressively incorporated into a grey and anonymous residential periphery, a victim of oblivion with the consequent physical decline and sad abandonment of some of its builings. But with the turn of the century and the advent of a number of large public events, such as the 2006 Winter Olympics and the current celebrations of 150 years of Italian unification, a second, interesting life for this part of the city was envisioned. The Palazzo a Vela was renovated by Gae Aulenti. In 2004 the competition for the redesign of the Automobile Museum was announced and won the following year by the group made up of Cino Zucchi, Recchi Engineering and Proger.

The museum has recently opened and the comparison between 1961 and 2011 now seems almost brutal, albeit extremely significant. The prolonged economic crisis plaguing all nations has inevitably reduced budgets, but it is the climate of modernist optimism, along with faith in the future, that has completely evaporated, making way for disillusioned silence—the fruit of a postmodern culture overwhelmed by events. However, in this same climate we can identify fragments for possible and necessary future action that might, perhaps, make some sense of contemporary design activity. The intelligent renovation of the Automobile Museum, together with other celebratory projects in Turin for 150 years of national unity (all based on the careful recovery of existing buildings), suggests that the time has passed for wantonly consuming territories and resources. Instead, now is the moment for radically rethinking Italy's pervasive and complex heritage.

One of the most representative traits of Italian architecture throughout the 20th century was the relationship between history, place and modernity. For too long this aspect was stifled by a reassuring, albeit soporific, critical regionalism. However, today it is becoming one of the defining forces in our national architecture undergoing an identity crisis. The renovation of the Automobile Museum, as well as the recent Museum of the 20th Century by Italo Rota in Milan, demonstrate that reuse projects are not simply stylistic makeovers, but above all the radical rethinking of the urban and regional qualities of a building envisaged to become a city's new civic landmark.

Albertini's building, with its great suspended hall overlooking the River Po, its circular exhibition system and auditorium at the rear, thus became a perfect starting point for a sophisticated strategy of symbolic and functional recovery. The building's hard and prismatic original volumes are enclosed by a new metal and glass skin, defining a unitary geometry and generating exhibition and service spaces around its perimeter. With its sinuous and updated facade design, Zucchi's project deftly aligns itself with some of the most evolved examples on the international scene, where the theme of the building envelope has been increasingly turned into an elegant and mannered exercise in virtuosity.

But the originality of Zucchi's design stands out in his ability to give depth and body to the facade surface, as well as in the radical redesign of the ground floor culminating in the powerful steel-clad lobby. Reinforcing architecture's functional and aesthetic urbanity has always been one of the distinctive traits of his work. Along with Stefano Boeri and Mario Cucinella, Zucchi is probably one of the few Italian architects of his generation to achieve significant international recognition. His recent projects for Milan-Portello, Venice and the recently won competition for the Lavazza area in Turin show a willingness to inject urban quality into architectural design through a few very careful reconnective gestures supported by a language that is both sober and skilfully up to date. So, yet again, the reborn Automobile Museum bears out that subtle—and very Italian—art of open-handed listening and intelligent low-budget recombination in which the country's recent architecture has now become an absolute master.
Luca Molinari, architect and critic

Design, site supervision, works safety: Cino Zucchi Architetti, Proger, Recchi Engineering
Client: Museo dell'Automobile "Carlo Biscaretti di Ruffia"
Procedure management (RUP) and works supervision: Marco Dioguardi
RUP support: Enrico Bertoletti (Pro Engineering Srl)
Design architect: Cino Zucchi Architetti (Cino Zucchi with Pietro Bagnoli, Maria Rita Solimando Romano; and Maria Nazarena Agostoni, Cristina Balet Sala, Gianni Cafaggini, Michele Corno, Filippo Carcano, Francesco Cazzola, Maria Silvia Di Vita, Luca Donadoni, Stefano Goffi, Linda Larice, Diego Martinelli) Filippo Facchinetto (rendering)
Structural engineering: M. Angelucci Sergio Sgambati (Proger Spa) with Daniele Bertani, Claudio Bruni, Andrea Castelnovo, Andrea Ginelli, Nicola Radice, Alessandro Rebughini, Genziana Salvatori, Daniela Serini, Massimo Toscano, Elisa Zaffalon
Electrical engineering: Walter Mauro, Giorgio Finotti, Massimo Cadorin (Proger Spa)
Project and construction management: Emanuela Recchi, Davide Sportoletti Baduel; Proger Spa–Massimo di Russo, Lorenzo Miscia Structural metalwork design: Marcello Durbano
Glass and metal cladding design: Michele Caolo, Caolo srl
Contractors: ARCAS SpA (Representative firm), Siemens SpA; Bogetto Engineering Srl; D'Arcano Sergio (principal firms)