Competition DownloadPDF

The refunctioning project for this prison compound poses delicate compatibility problems between the new functions and the original architectural identity of the buildings.
Born as a place of seclusion, an enclosure within the XIX Century city, the compound shall have to abandon its ‘fortified’ characteristics to open itself to tertiary, museum-related, university and cultural activities.
Two main issues arise: how to blend two contradictory types of functions (judiciary, thereforein need to maintain a relative degree of discretion, and cultural, therefore necessarily open) and how to ensure a correct, flexible and efficient internal organization within the limits of an extremely interesting building, structurally bound, with an intervention of conservative restoration that shall have to obey to specific characteristics of a rigid and repetitive typologic and structural design.