Santa Marta Bakery, Verona

Description

The restoration of the Santa Marta Bakery in Verona transformed a vast 19th-century military bread factory—100,000 cubic metres distributed over five levels, including a fully buried basement—into the new School of Economics of the University of Verona. The project confronted a building of extraordinary scale and robustness, defined by massive stone-and-brick walls, brick vaults, timber roof structures and long, repetitive bays shaped by its industrial logic. Rather than altering this character, the intervention sought to reactivate it through minimal yet decisive spatial operations. The original distribution was clarified by reopening long sequences of bricked-up arches and by establishing a continuous hierarchy of horizontal and vertical routes capable of serving the building’s new academic programme. Four iron fire-escape staircases, placed at the ends of the long wings, provide safety and accessibility without disturbing the historic fabric. Three internal courtyards were roofed with iron-and-glass structures that bring controlled daylight to the deep interior and create environmental stability for study, teaching and circulation spaces. A key transformation was the excavation of the entire building perimeter: a linear trench that restores light and air to the once unusable basement and establishes a new longitudinal axis connecting the two major external stair towers. At attic level—now home to the university library—light was increased through thin cuts along the courtyard edges, resolved with glass diaphragms that form small terraces and clarify the relationship between historic roofs and new functions. Throughout the project, new elements were designed as autonomous insertions: metal, glass and crafted details that do not mimic the historic fabric but interact with it, ensuring full legibility of the structure, materials and construction logic. The intervention ultimately creates a comfortable, contemporary academic environment while preserving the essential substance of the original organism and ensuring its long-term viability.