Uffizi, goodbye to Isozaki's Loggia: there is a no from the Higher Council of Cultural Heritage

The Uffizi will not have Isozaki’s Loggia. The more than 20-year affair of the exit of the Florence museum, which was to be completed with the design of Japanese architect Arata Isozaki, winner in 1998 of the competition announced by the Ministry, ended with the negative opinion of the Superior Council of Cultural Heritage, which met late yesterday afternoon. Isozaki, who died at age 91 in 2022, envisioned a large steel and stone loggia with four statues, inspired by the Loggia dei Lanzi in Piazza della Signoria. Work was to be completed by 2003, but due to delays of various kinds the whole thing dragged on for twenty-five years. And to think that earlier this year there had even been an appeal to the Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano, by the Order of Architects of Florence and several other parties, to ask that the work be started, and in 2020 the Loggia had been financed with 12 million euros as part of the strategic plan “Grandi Progetti Beni Culturali.”

The affair therefore reached its denouement, with the project being abandoned. The Council’s opinion was negative: after the intervention of the undersecretary for culture Vittorio Sgarbi (who has always been opposed to Isozaki’s Loggia), who expressed his position, gathering the consensus of all the councilors, the body’s opinion arrived, unanimously negative.

Now what will happen? Beyond economic issues (it will have to be understood whether the state will have to pay penalties), the fact remains that the Uffizi exit has been a huge construction site for years: a situation unworthy for a museum like the Uffizi and for a city like Florence. What then will become of this construction site? Undersecretary Sgarbi explained that “it will be the state that decides,” and anticipated that he had “delivered to the superintendence a design idea for the exit of the Uffizi with a garden architecture that includes all imaginable plants.” A new competition will therefore be necessary, and presumably there will still be a long wait to see the project completed. And who knows how much longer we will have to see the construction cranes soaring over the skies of Florence.

Uffizi, goodbye to Isozaki's Loggia: there is a no from the Higher Council of Cultural Heritage

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