The multimedia museum by Sauerbruch Hutton

With tact and measure, operating through linguistic subtraction, formal and material reduction, the architects of the Berlin-based studio Sauerbruch Hutton have guided the complex process of urban regeneration in an area of 8775 square meters, which for over a century was off limits to the public, since it was a military barracks. The architects have worked on seven buildings, including three new constructions.

Their work has spanned different levels of reflection and intervention: the site itself and its layered memory over time, the old and new buildings with their contents and functions connected with the museum (cafes, restaurants, bookstores, kids, entertainment), and the spatial-visual organization of the overall insertion in the urban context.

“We sought dialogue, in a spirit of openness and inclusion, first of all with the community of reference, and then in territorial and architectural terms,” the designers explain, “linking back to existing forms and images, and the surrounding landscape. We now live in the post-Bilbao era: it is possible to be spectacular also by working on fragments.

With color, for example, that plays a key role in terms of perception, varying the spatial impact of a compositional puzzle, also through optical effects. The facades of the new museum building are clad in a multicolored texture of over 20,000 ceramic pieces in 13 tones, which vary their appearance with the changing light, connecting with the chromatic variety of their surroundings.”

This ‘materic luxury’ is one of the main characteristics of a vast integrated project that has involved the restoration of a former convent from the 1500s, to create retail spaces gravitating around the cloister, topped by a new transparent glass surface; the recovery of the two volumes of the former cavalry barracks from the Napoleonic era, finished in fair-face concrete; the renovation of an office building from the 1970s, now featuring a green roof.

There are six pedestrian walkways that establish a relationship, a programmatic connection between the internal 'piazza' of the new center and the city, ensuring complete permeability and use of the area. In addition, there is the important factor of sustainability: the German architects have made use of thermal mass activation, geothermal system with 63 probes at a depth of 110 meters, and energy produced by 276 photovoltaic panels placed over the buildings.

Finally, there is the innovative formula of a museum of the Italian 20th century, on two of the three levels of the main building, which focuses on the potential of a small “smart city” already in action: this is what makes the M9 of Mestre so unique. The narrative of the epochal changes of the 20th century in Italy is entirely multimedia, conceived as a set of interactive technological experiences.

The ‘cultural assets’ of the 1900s, including cartographic, photographic, sound and AV materials, are accessed in immersive reconstructions inside black-box installations, arranged freely in the itinerary (the route can be selected by the visitor, depending on personal interests), in a fluid narrative subdivided into eight thematic zones, thanks to the contributions of historians, sociologists and writers. As well as designers, of course. The overall coordination of the internal exhibits is by Stefano Gris/Studio Grisdainese.

The installations of the eight thematic zones are by Carraro Lab, Clonwerk-Limiteazero, Dotdotdot, Karmachina-Engeneering Associates and Nema FX, specializing in building bridges between past and future. The Milan-based studio Dotdotdot, for example, has created digital and interaction design settings on Italian culture and identity, sections 7 (Being Italians: Education, background and information) and 8 (To be recognized: what makes us feel like Italians).