Analysis of a Sustainable Site Specific Museum design experience for the Opera of Santa Croce’s Museum, Italy. [project panel]

The design case study is a sustainable Welcome Point inside the magnum claustrum of the Santa Croce complex in Florence (Italy) that serves as new decompression space both for entering and exiting visitors. At the same times it redefines the nowadays lost original geometries of the claustrum and hosts new spaces for the museum’s staff. Moreover the whole museum system is reconsidered with the introduction of the new structure, returning to the complex and the visitors part of the cultural heritage that went lost in time with the removal of the original structures. Thanks to an agreement among the Opera di Santa Croce and the University of Florence, the Staging and Museography course of the Architecture School led by Prof. Giacomo Pirazzoli was aimed at taking consciousness of the Santa Croce complex as “Museum of itself” mainsly as a “place where the dignity of the cultural goods is recognised, a totality of marks questioned within the space, enabling the physical space, the contained objects and their bonds to each other to have the same weight. In other words this is multidisciplinary experimentation that extends the concept of ”artwork created to exist in a certain place” to the museum, obtaining a “SIte Specific MUSeum as a museum created to exist in a certain place”. The temporary welcome point of the museum is structurally independent from the ancient complex, as it can be assembled and removed in short time according to the requirements of the client. The SiSMus has been designed following the Life Cycle Design and Life Cycle Costing approaches, so it endorses the concept of sustainability: has been designed with recycled and recyclable materials and keeping in mind the reduction of the carbon burden. Indeed the structure is entirely made of dry-assembly building systems and offers the possibility to install solar harvesting systems on its envelope to achieve energetic indipendence. Its building envelope is characterized by a copper surface that matures like its setting, mutating colour and aspect as time goes by. It also allows a soft natural lighting that reduces the use of artificial lighting during daytime and maximizes the internal comfort with high-performance glazings and a fully insulated copper roofing. All the ancillary concrete pre-casted elements are obtained from mixes that include minced stone scraps from local caves, reducing the costs and use of raw materials. In conclusion this sustainable architecture serves both the visitors and the museum, whilst being non-invasive and resource consuming. Furthermore it restores the original proportions between the different parts of the complex with a minor impact on its environmental footprint. The design of the Welcome Point is the result of the on-site workshop, led by Prof. Arch. PhD Giacomo Pirazzoli, architectural design expert and SISMUS project national coordinator. The technological solutions have been designed using collaborative design methodologies and tools developed by TxP Research, with the support of Prof. Arch. PhD Maria Antonietta Esposito - outstanding architecture technologist and TxP supervisor. This design experience was possible thanks to the helpfulness of the Opera di Santa Croce association, that hosted the temporary workshop.