New Exhibition Spaces for Pinacoteca di Brera | Giulia Zucchiatti

The thesis has its starting point in the project by Mario Bellini on museum  Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan and has the aims to integrate it with the  development of a new museum, formed from the vast heritage of the Accademia delle Belle Arti. The project is formed on one side by the desire to continue the contemporary debate on the expansion of the Pinacoteca exhibition space and on the other side by the wish not to lose the roots of what Brera has always been.

Architects: Giulia Zucchiatti
Location: Milan 
Brera museum’s function has always been linked to the Academy but, in recent years, this relationship has become more and more tenuous. The desire to design a museum dedicated to the works in the ownership of the Academy is intended as a gesture of “rediscovery of the origins” which goes to highlight the equal importance of teaching and exposition in Brera.

The project is therefore the union of two exhibition paths: that of the new Museum of the Academy, which develops in the underground building  complex of Brera and the other one, an extension of the Pinacoteca di Brera, which finds place in the former church of Santa Maria di Brera.

The former is given the same role that was once of the Pinacoteca, which are spaces designed for the exhibition of the works of art belonging to the  Academy where students have the opportunity to work in the presence of these pieces of fine art. The latter, before being a space in which to exhibit the sacred works in the property of the Pinacoteca di Brera, is the recovery of the  original space, as far as possible, of what was the church of Santa Maria di Brera before the construction of the Napoleonic halls in nineteenth century.