Museo Diocesano
2007
Location: Milan, Italy
Client: -
Project Status: Competition
This design was submitted in an invited competition for an extension to the Museo Diocesano, part of the monastery complex of the Romanesque basilica of Sant'Eustorgio. The complex situation of the competition site required a new building to complete the missing fourth side of a renaissance cloister, as well as to mediate between a frontage on the Corso di Porta Ticinese and an elevation to the Parco delle Basiliche. The strangely informal enclosure of the park edge in the area of the city was the result of damage and partial demolition after the war, forming a loose city fabric with which the design positively engaged.
The proposal for a compact linear building with a vaulted structure, gave a figurative image to the museum as if it were an amplified expression of the interior architecture of the cloisters, turning around the current museum’s inward aspect. A feeling of lightness and generosity of space is reinforced by the whiteness of the concrete building and its smooth elevations.
The compact plan strengthened the cloister as the central space around which the Museum was organised, allowing visitors to move easily between temporary exhibitions in the new building and collection galleries in the old, with all the dynamic possibilities for curatorial connections between the tow which could characterise the nature of this special museum.