GAGAPALIZI – A New Museum for Florence
EPOS Architects
LOCATION – Florence, Italy
CLIENT – The City of Florence
YEAR – 2022
STATUS – Competition
PROGRAM – Museum / Gallery
PROJECT LEAD – Esper Postma
COLLABORATORS – Villa Romana; Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz
Visitors to Florence can be overwhelmed by the tremendous number of museums and archives in the city. The fragmentation of its collections makes it difficult for an audience to understand the connections between them, as well as the historical context in which all this wealth was created. The GAGAPALIZI museum is designed to create the overview that is lacking. This new institution employs architecture to make the relations between museum collections more explicit. The GAGAPALIZI integrates three existing museums that are in close proximity: the Galilei Galileo Museum, Palazzo Vecchio, and the Uffizi. It does so through the creation of an elongated glass building which zigzags between – and cuts straight through – the existing museum buildings.
In recent decades, Florentine institutions have been under mounting pressure to tell stories outside of the historical canon. An often-heard critique is that the city is promoting an outdated version of Renaissance history. As Angelika Stepken, former director of Villa Romana, recently put it: "Florence sells itself as the Cradle of the Renaissance and as a „Sehnsuchtsort“ (place of belonging) – and insists in an incredibly provincial way on not changing its master narratives (...)"
If Florence wants to move with the times, it is of vital importance that it tells a more critical and inclusive narrative. The GAGAPALIZI is devoted to just that: presenting a more comprehensive biography of the city.
At the center of the museum is the Uffizi, housing one of the most important collections of Renaissance painting in the world. One of the major achievements of Renaissance painting is that it became more natural. It imitated nature to such an extent that a painting functioned as "a window onto the world". The premise of the GAGAPALIZI is to show how this achievement stood in relation to all other cultural and political developments of the time. It does so by creating direct pathways between specific rooms in the Uffizi and rooms in the Galilei Galileo museum and Palazzo Vecchio. For instance, the institution makes explicit the relationship between developments in Renaissance painting and the mapping and conquering of space. A direct pathway between the Uffizi's Botticelli room and the Hall of Maps in Palazzo Vecchio shows that with painting's ability to represent space, it also became possible to represent it in the form of accurate geographical maps, which aided Florence in its wars at sea. Another connection is drawn between painting and astronomy. To this end, a direct path leads between the Caravaggio room in the Uffizi and the room with telescopes in the Galileo Museum. At a young age, Galileo's ambition was to become a painter. As the art historian Horst Bredekamp has convincingly shown, Galileo's studies of drawing perspective helped him in devising a telescope. Through his telescope he could closely observe the moon, which he examined through drawing. His experience in the rendering of light and shade made him the first person to realise that the moon is not a perfect round sphere, but is full of mountains and craters.
The architecture of the GAGAPALIZI is not only a means of drawing critical connections between collections. It is also a way of putting the museums themselves on display. The glass architecture will cut straight through the existing museum buildings. The buildings will thus be exposed as a cross-section behind glass. The audience is presented with a view of different floors at the same time, including the museum offices and storage rooms. This provides the museum with a new element of transparency with regard to both its architecture and its current policy of conservation and display.
The GAGAPALIZI provides ample new exhibition space between the three museum buildings. This space is used for exhibitions on Florence's post Renaissance history. We propose to shed light on historical chapters that are underrepresented in Italian museums, such as Italy's colonial past. The archives from the institutes Istituto Geografico Militare and the Istituto Agronomico per l'Oltremare, both based in Florence, can shed light on the way that the city was implicated in the colonisation of African territories.
The GAGAPALIZI is the innovative institution that Florence needs to contribute to a more equitable future. It overhauls the history of the city by reframing existing museum displays, while also providing space for new exhibitions. The benefits of the GAGAPALIZI are threefold.
Firstly, the GAGAPALIZI facilitates an expanded interpretation of the achievements of the Renaissance. The institution does justice to the cross disciplinary nature of the Renaissance, by showing how all developments were influencing each other.
Secondly, the museum will broaden the scope of the museums in Florence beyond the Renaissance. It shows the history of the city in a critical light, while also reflecting on the policy of its institutions.
Lastly, by making GAGAPALIZI, there is no need for an entirely new institution, with all the personnel costs that comes with it. Instead, the city may choose to merge the staff of the Uffizzi, the Museo Galileo and the Palazzo Vecchio into one team, thus bringing some welcome relief to the city's finances.
GAGAPALIZI – A New Museum for Florence
EPOS Architects
LOCATION – Florence, Italy
CLIENT – The City of Florence
YEAR – 2022
STATUS – Competition
PROGRAM – Museum / Gallery
PROJECT LEAD – Esper Postma
COLLABORATORS – Villa Romana; Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz
Visitors to Florence can be overwhelmed by the tremendous number of museums and archives in the city. The fragmentation of its collections makes it difficult for an audience to understand the connections between them, as well as the historical context in which all this wealth was created. The GAGAPALIZI museum is designed to create the overview that is lacking. This new institution employs architecture to make the relations between museum collections more explicit. The GAGAPALIZI integrates three existing museums that are in close proximity: the Galilei Galileo Museum, Palazzo Vecchio, and the Uffizi. It does so through the creation of an elongated glass building which zigzags between – and cuts straight through – the existing museum buildings.
In recent decades, Florentine institutions have been under mounting pressure to tell stories outside of the historical canon. An often-heard critique is that the city is promoting an outdated version of Renaissance history. As Angelika Stepken, former director of Villa Romana, recently put it: "Florence sells itself as the Cradle of the Renaissance and as a „Sehnsuchtsort“ (place of belonging) – and insists in an incredibly provincial way on not changing its master narratives (...)"
If Florence wants to move with the times, it is of vital importance that it tells a more critical and inclusive narrative. The GAGAPALIZI is devoted to just that: presenting a more comprehensive biography of the city.
At the center of the museum is the Uffizi, housing one of the most important collections of Renaissance painting in the world. One of the major achievements of Renaissance painting is that it became more natural. It imitated nature to such an extent that a painting functioned as "a window onto the world". The premise of the GAGAPALIZI is to show how this achievement stood in relation to all other cultural and political developments of the time. It does so by creating direct pathways between specific rooms in the Uffizi and rooms in the Galilei Galileo museum and Palazzo Vecchio. For instance, the institution makes explicit the relationship between developments in Renaissance painting and the mapping and conquering of space. A direct pathway between the Uffizi's Botticelli room and the Hall of Maps in Palazzo Vecchio shows that with painting's ability to represent space, it also became possible to represent it in the form of accurate geographical maps, which aided Florence in its wars at sea. Another connection is drawn between painting and astronomy. To this end, a direct path leads between the Caravaggio room in the Uffizi and the room with telescopes in the Galileo Museum. At a young age, Galileo's ambition was to become a painter. As the art historian Horst Bredekamp has convincingly shown, Galileo's studies of drawing perspective helped him in devising a telescope. Through his telescope he could closely observe the moon, which he examined through drawing. His experience in the rendering of light and shade made him the first person to realise that the moon is not a perfect round sphere, but is full of mountains and craters.
The architecture of the GAGAPALIZI is not only a means of drawing critical connections between collections. It is also a way of putting the museums themselves on display. The glass architecture will cut straight through the existing museum buildings. The buildings will thus be exposed as a cross-section behind glass. The audience is presented with a view of different floors at the same time, including the museum offices and storage rooms. This provides the museum with a new element of transparency with regard to both its architecture and its current policy of conservation and display.
The GAGAPALIZI provides ample new exhibition space between the three museum buildings. This space is used for exhibitions on Florence's post Renaissance history. We propose to shed light on historical chapters that are underrepresented in Italian museums, such as Italy's colonial past. The archives from the institutes Istituto Geografico Militare and the Istituto Agronomico per l'Oltremare, both based in Florence, can shed light on the way that the city was implicated in the colonisation of African territories.
The GAGAPALIZI is the innovative institution that Florence needs to contribute to a more equitable future. It overhauls the history of the city by reframing existing museum displays, while also providing space for new exhibitions. The benefits of the GAGAPALIZI are threefold.
Firstly, the GAGAPALIZI facilitates an expanded interpretation of the achievements of the Renaissance. The institution does justice to the cross disciplinary nature of the Renaissance, by showing how all developments were influencing each other.
Secondly, the museum will broaden the scope of the museums in Florence beyond the Renaissance. It shows the history of the city in a critical light, while also reflecting on the policy of its institutions.
Lastly, by making GAGAPALIZI, there is no need for an entirely new institution, with all the personnel costs that comes with it. Instead, the city may choose to merge the staff of the Uffizzi, the Museo Galileo and the Palazzo Vecchio into one team, thus bringing some welcome relief to the city's finances.