Bernard Tschumi Architects has unveiled the schematic design for the firm’s first work in Italy: ANIMA, a new cultural center in the city of Grottammare. The project has been commissioned by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Ascoli Piceno and the Municipality of Grottammare and is expected to be completed by 2016.
Unveiled on February 20, 2013, ANIMA is the first project by architect Bernard Tschumi in Italy. Commissioned by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Ascoli Piceno and by the Municipality of Grottammare, it is meant to generate stronger ties between the people and the territory, as well as to associate its image to the most diverse manifestations of culture in the form of a public center. The project, whose completion is scheduled for 2016, is a future point of reference, a generator of ideas in the area, both in the sense of a physical built structure but also figuratively inherent in its creative potential. Placed at the fringes of the urban fabric, between the sea and hills that characterize the landscape, the building is clearly visible and immediately accessible from the Adriatic highway. The spatial design is characterized by an exceptional flexibility, floor areas, structural systems, and vertical movement (stairs, elevators) organized in such a way that changing demands can be accommodated.
The decision to entrust Bernard Tschumi with this task was based on his extensive and varied experience designing spaces intended for culture. The name of the project, ANIMA, is the result of a public referendum for an acronym of the following concepts: A for Art, N for Nature, I for Ideas, M for Music and A for Action. These are the “five souls” of the project, which Bernard Tschumi used to generate the artifact: an identity in constant flux. The building will be a catalyst for people’s interests, interaction and synergy, promoted by clients who understand architecture as a process rather than a final product. Vincenzo Marini Marini, president of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Acoli Piceno and Luigi Merli, Mayor of Grottammare, stated that “the basis for the commission of the project is expressed as a willingness to support and encourage the economic development of the community, as a process to strengthen people’s ties to the territory with which they identify, as a means to progress local knowledge and, finally, as a means to improve the qualitative and quantitative tourist flows in the area”.