GIARDINO DELLE SCULTURE. A MUSEUM CONCEIVED THROUGH OPEN-AIR “ROOMS” FOR PART PALAZZI DELL’ ARTE RIMINI

Location: Rimini, Italy
Year: 2021
Type: Landscape, Museum
Client: Comune di Rimini, Fondazione San Patrignano

Photo credit: Henrik Blomqvist

The project transforms Rimini’s historic public space of the municipal oven into an exhibition garden that can host contemporary art sculptures and that can put them “in dialogue” through an innovative museographic project.

art+architecture, collezionesanpatrignano, exhibitions, garden, PART museum, rimini

The project of the new sculpture garden was born as an extension of the complex of PART – Palazzi dell’Arte Rimini in the urban area behind Palazzo dell’Arengo and Palazzo del Podestà and wants to respond to the request to create a quality public and community space dedicated to art, characterized by a strong social role, as well as cultural.

Since the area was dedicated until 1898 to the communal oven of the city of Rimini, which insisted in a punctual way in the perimeter of the current garden, the project intends to regain possession of this original collective function, but in a museum key, emphasizing the relationship between man, art and nature. The leitmotif of this intervention is the theme of the enhancement of historical memory: the presence of green shrub walls evocatively recalls the state of ruin of the architecture of the oven and also allows the opening and closing of visual glimpses of the artworks, nature and the city.

The fundamental novelty that introduces the museographic project is the subdivision of the space for “expositive rooms” in an open environment and dipped in the green which, proposing an actual version of the Italian garden, allow the visitor to enjoy the museum visit in a fluid way and without constraints of route, avoiding the contamination among different artworks so as to facilitate the reading and valuing the identity. The rooms, therefore, are conceived as “corners of thought”, spaces of reflection in which the visitor can feel in dialogue with the single sculpture.

This is the innovative element of the setting up: musealizing an external space, adapting in an absolutely effective way the concept of “room” of an internal and well delimited environment to an external one. To facilitate this setting, it was decided to take inspiration from the planimetric division of the oven. The aim of the museograpghic project, besides facilitating the fruition of the sculptures, is to make the garden able to host events, manifestations and meetings and to create both permanent and temporary exhibitions.

In terms of project execution, the garden area covers 1675 square meters, is characterized by the presence of a pool of water located in axis with the meeting point between the Palazzo dell’Arengo and that of the Podestà, provides a walkway made of cubes of stone of San Marino and solid bricks and is divided into seven rooms to accommodate the corresponding seven sculptures. The space is enriched by benches, whose angular shape generates continuity with the structures of the architectural environment inside PART, and the planting of 345 yew hedges and new trees, thus increasing the amount of vertical green.

If on the one hand PART is conceived as a restored medieval building that hosts contemporary artworks that do not have a common thread, on the other hand its garden solves precisely this exhibition “museum question” with an experimental and completely original solution, intervening on the lack of dialogue between the sculptures. For this reason, the complex can truly be defined as an avant-garde cultural institution, where visitors can feel at ease coming into contact with contemporary art and with a new idea of a museum that renews the constant dialogue between the works and the spaces that house them.

ARTISTS AND WORKS

Several artists are hosted by the sculpture garden, national and international: Alberto Garutti, Paul Kneale, Giuseppe Penone, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Kiki Smith, Piotr Uklanski, Chen Zhen. Particular attention is paid to the installation by Paul Kneale (Sculpture concept, 2019), being the only “site specific” work donated by Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo specifically for the space of the garden. All the works, in fact, are the result of loans or donations from private individuals and entities such as Galleria Continua, Gagosian, Massimo De Carlo.

Comune di Rimini – Single Project Manager

Ing. Chiara Fravisini

Fondazione San Patrignano – Curatorial Coordinator

Clarice Pecori Giraldi

Concept – Architectural and exhibition design

Studio AR.CH.IT – Arch. Luca Cipelletti

Lighting Design

Studio Pasetti – Arch. Alberto Pasetti Bombardella

Landscape Design

Comune di Rimini – Ing. Arch. Carlotta Fabbri

Structural engineer

Comune di Rimini – Ing. Paolo Patrignani

Mechanical plant

Comune di Rimini – Ing. Giulia Barbieri

Electrical system

Officina Elettrica Studio progettazione impianti – Per. Ind. Devis Lombardi

Graphic design

Vertical media – Lorenzo Berti

General Construction Management

Studio Tognoloni – Arch. Stefania Tognoloni

Operational Works Management

Comune di Rimini:

Arch. Valentina Maggioli

Ing. Arch. Carlotta Fabbri

Geom. Stefano Bastianini

Ing. Paolo Patrignani

Ing. Luca Paganelli

Security Coordination

Comune di Rimini:

Geom. Cristiano Vitali

Geom. Fabio Canducci

High Supervision Superintendence of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape

Territorial Managers for the Province of Rimini:

Arch. Vincenzo Napoli

Arch. Alessandra Del Nista

Arch. Annalisa Pozzi

Construction Company

Mammoli Edilizia S.r.l.

Lighting fixtures

DDS Elettronica S.r.l.

Green Project

Vivai e Piante Fabbri Società Agricola S.S.

Stone flooring and furniture

Scalpellini Sammarinesi Massimo Capicchioni e Daniele Taddei

Ironworks

Montemaggi S.r.l.

Ornamental basin

Idrosfera S.r.l.

Exhibition Registrar

Open Care S.p.a.– Alessandro Borsani

Prints

Neon Rimini Group S.r.l.– Paolo Ciabatta