New Cultural Center | Didonè Comacchio Architects

The intervention plays an important role in favor of the safety of the artistic heritage and in the interest of the services offered to citizens. The design proposal aims to solve the problems related to the seismic adaptation of the building and its recovery.
The challenge, in a process of redesigning an existing architectural space, is to recover the memory of the place and harmonize it with the new program. It is proposed to maintain the subdivision and hierarchy of the tripartite spaces according to a classical layout of the typology of the Venetian villa. The elevator and the stairs between the ground floor and the first floor are fully preserved and become the pivot around which vertical circulation is developed. The goal is to create a contemporary environment that gives new life to the building in balance between past and present: the original perimeter walls coexist with the structural reinforcement system which punctually provides for the insertion of steel bracing frames inside counter walls (north and south sides).
The project proposes a clear and essential architecture, which enhances the spatial qualities of the building.
The floor and the roof of the second level in concrete (expansion carried out in the 1960s) will be demolished, rebuilt and reconfigured with a lighter steel structure: the re-proposed top volume will be clad in burnished seamed sheet metal, to trigger a dialogue between the contemporaneity and pre-existence. A terrace is proposed, obtained by excavating the volume of the second level and the roof, a belvedere that frames the landscape of Monte Grappa and the magnificent Villa Piovene. This space can become one of the key places in the area, a real quality space for citizens. The system of openings on the west elevation is rebalanced to recover a more orderly and similar composition to the original.

As for the interior finishes, the use of traditional materials is foreseen (Vicenza stone on the first floor and wood on the top floor for the internal flooring) and reinterpreted according to contemporary canons (external cladding of the second floor volume / roof and fixtures in pre-painted crimped sheet metal with burnished finish.