Lucca, unveiled the project for the new Lucca Center for the Arts. Over ten million euro investment

The Lucca ETS Center for the Arts Foundation today unveiled plans to create the new Lucca Center for the Arts, a museum hub with an international scope designed to host high-level exhibitions and events. The initiative aims to enrich and complete the cultural and artistic offerings of Lucca and Tuscany. With an investment of more than ten million euros, the project involves the redevelopment of a building of about 2,500 square meters, once home to the National Cinema and the Manifattura Tabacchi after-work club, in a strategic location with excellent accessibility and favorable visibility.

The renovation, entrusted to Too Studio of Reggio Emilia, founded by architects Marco Denti and Monica Gambini, will get under way in the coming months. Among the five competing projects, Too Studio’s was selected for its attention to detail, increased floor area, and provision of welcoming and stimulating environments.

The building, long since disused, has housed a hospital, a cinema, a kindergarten and a recreation center over the years, while retaining its architectural and artistic peculiarities. The objective of the intervention is to return this building to the community, transforming it into a modern cultural center, but without altering its peculiarities. The project revolves around the concept of “recognizability,” with a focus not only on the physical redevelopment of the building, but also on enhancing its historical significance for the city of Lucca.

The design approach enhances the artistic and spatial elements of the building, reorganizing the rooms to improve their functionality. A central aspect is the elimination of architectural barriers, which will allow direct access to the structure through the main entrance on Piazzale Verdi. Crossing the historic threshold, visitors will find themselves in a large room with vaulted and frescoed walls, which will serve as a welcoming reception area with a ticket office and bookshop. To the left of this space, a cafeteria will provide a refreshment and meeting place. The exhibition rooms, spread over several levels and enhanced by a mezzanine, are designed to provide great flexibility, adapting to different exhibition needs. Large windows, which can be darkened as needed, will allow for modulating natural lighting and create a visual connection between the interior space and the surrounding urban context. A particularly prestigious area will be the top floor of the building’s tower, designated for the permanent collection of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca, which will house masterpieces related to the city’s history. The entire structure will be fully accessible, with no differentiated routes, ensuring an inclusive experience for all visitors.

Statements

“Today begins a path of regeneration,” comments the president of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio, Marcello Bertocchini, “in which a private property is returned to Lucca with a doubly public function: in giving life to a new place of culture and in making available to the city, also understood as a socio-economic fabric, an additional pole of attraction, conceived and designed to propose an unprecedented offer that is currently not present. As always, in fact, the Foundation has undertaken this path following a discussion with the institutions and realities of the territory, actively and proactively interpreting its role of support and subsidiarity. The Center of the Arts will be a place of experience, in which to learn and disseminate, but above all to open one’s mind to forms of cultural communication and artistic expression that are absolutely new to Lucca. A window on the world and a point of reference in the national and international panorama.”

“The Fondazione Centro delle Arti Lucca was established last May, strongly desired by the Ragghianti Foundation and the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca, and it is fully operational: the meetings of the Board of Directors and the Scientific Committee have begun, and today we are proud, once we have obtained the authorizations of the tutelary body, to present the project of the new exhibition center,” says Alberto Fontana, president of the Fondazione Centro delle Arti Lucca. “Our mission, once the work is completed and the exhibition center is open, will be to offer the public high-level programming capable of attracting a continuous flow of visitors. We are confident that the Center for the Arts will generate value for the city of Lucca and for the entire territory.”

“The Center for the Arts, promoted by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca and the Ragghianti Foundation, is shaped in a building already shaped by the city’s vital thrust of which it has been a manifesto protagonist,” notes architect Monica Gambini. “The threads of history and culture between the building and the community are thus reknotted into a new weave, in which weaves can be found for future further connections.”

“The new exhibition center will offer continuous programming of exhibitions, lectures, meetings and screenings. The exhibitions will be curated by the best experts, and will combine scientific rigor and accessibility,” adds Paolo Bolpagni, general director of the Fondazione Centro delle Arti Lucca. “We will strive to propose an original and distinctive offer, avoiding the replication of existing models, with the goal of making the Lucca Center for the Arts a cultural engine not only for Lucca, but for the entire national community.”

Lucca, unveiled the project for the new Lucca Center for the Arts. Over ten million euro investment

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