Public LIbrary, Senigallia

Description

The project for the library and archive of Senigallia transforms the upper floors of the Foro Annonario and the adjacent former slaughterhouse—two 19th-century wings built above Renaissance fortifications—into a continuous architectural organism. The intervention clarified the historic fabric by removing superfluous 20th-century sheds and exposing the monolithic battered brick walls, while the decaying kingpost trusses were conserved through careful subtraction, reinforcement rods, and resin injections, preserving their material authenticity. In the curved wings, daylight filtered through knee-height lunettes is diffused by a diaphragm of sandblasted glazing, generating a warm, uniform luminosity. Freestanding volumes—cypress-clad cubes for services, transparent glass boxes for offices, elliptical stair shafts—redefine the internal landscape through reversible, non-mimetic insertions. The former slaughterhouse was fully emptied and its floor lowered to create four levels of sliding steel stacks supported by an independent concrete structure, conceived as a light scaffold inside the historic shell, leaving a controlled gap that becomes a kinetic space of light and shadow. The entire complex embodies a calibrated dialogue between heavy and light, solid and transparent, allowing historic matter and contemporary techniques to coexist in a unified chronotope. A complete Diocesan Museum was designed, including brass display cases, fibre-optic lighting, and climate-protected bases for sculpture and liturgical objects; however, the museographic installation was never executed and the artworks were not transferred. Subsequent administrative choices assigned the restored complex to alternative uses. Today the halls host temporary exhibitions, cultural programs, private events, and public functions, while the architectural clarity and spatial continuity achieved through the restoration remain fully legible.