MISSION
“The Museo Ettore Fico is a place that gives strong impetus to positive processes of socialization and cultural growth, with broad accessibility of spaces and contents, where creative and artistic languages can be discovered and experienced.”
SPACES
The Museo Ettore Fico is in via Cigna 114, in an urban area called Spina 4, which is currently at the heart of a vast restoration plan of an abandoned industrial site.
Next to the Docks Dora, where numerous artists studios are based, the MEF is part of an extremely interesting social context, very lively and strongly multi-ethnic.
Some contemporary art galleries have moved to this same area; new art and music workshops found in the neighbourhood an ideal location for experimentation and research.
The MEF has a pretty strategic position, as it is the first museum that visitors will meet entering the city from Milan and the whole eastern region as well.
There is a plan for a new underground stop only few blocks away (in piazza Conti di Rebaudengo) and for the new stretch of the covered city rail link, which will connect the MEF to the city centre in very few minutes.
PROGRAMME
The MEF provides an international cultural offer, organizing exhibitions, cultural events, workshops, roundtables and meetings, with the aim to affect a vast number of people interested in modern and contemporary art, but considering some incursions into ancient art.
The exhibition programme, which includes three annual thematic exhibitions, features three different levels: the first level is focused on monographic exhibitions of great masters or on didactic historical collective exhibitions; the second on contemporary artists who will directly operate on the spaces of the museum; while the third places side by side different art forms (fashion, design, cinema etc.).
PROJECT
The building which houses the Museo Ettore Fico is part of a former manufacturing facility which through the years underwent significant transformations.
Orthogonally set to via Cigna, the building has a rectangular plan whose short side is about 10 meters long, while its length measures 100 meters; its highness is remarkable: about 17 meters.
In the visual perception, its proportions are amplified by its tunnel roofing. Wide full-length windows and panoramic aspects offer open views and a lively play of light.
A smaller two-storey building is directly connected to the main body.
A vast terrace overlooking via Cigna tops the building and forms a special visual relationship with urban landscape.
The design was particularly focused on studying and enhance natural and artificial lighting, as well as on modulating and managing the most convenient lighting to fully enjoy the museum.
Project concept
Andrea Busto and Alex Cepernich
Architectural project
Alex Cepernich