Architects DAP studio and Paola Giaconia have recently collaborated on this project in Ranica, a medieval town near Bergamo in northern Italy. 

The new Roberto Gritti Cultural Center contains a public library, an auditorium, a kindergarten, a dance and theatre school and has also just scooped its first award; a jury chaired by Swiss architect Aurelio Galfetti has selected it as the best public building completed in the Province of Bergamo in the last 10 years.

Opened to the public in the spring of last year, the 2000 square metre centre was conceived as a new catalyst for urban life in the area. Not only is the building a laboratory for education and information, but it is also envisaged as a new 'piazza' where people can meet and where citizens can reinforce their sense of belonging to their territory.

The site where the building rises, located midway between the city centre and an area of urban growth, is destined to turn into an important hub, and hence the centre represents a sort of threshold between the scale of the city and the scale of the surrounding territory.

According to Paola Giaconia, the aims of the project included triggering a dialogue between the new building, the city centre and the infrastructural system:

"If historically piazzas are defined by the visual and physical boundaries of the buildings surrounding them, in this project we tried to open up the building to city life by welcoming pedestrians into its core, under the large overhanging volume.

The large slab is pierced by a series of openings, along its perimeter - next to the main entrances - as well as in the middle, where two large courtyards bring natural light and fresh air."

Organised on two floors with the upper volume cantilivered out from the lower floor, the distinction between the two volumes is made even stronger by means of the choice of materials. 

On the ground, the space is enclosed by glazed and stuccoed walls, while the facades of the upper volume are made of coloured, sometimes semi-opaque polycarbonate panels which allow for silhouettes of people inside the building to be revealed outside.

The compactness of the exterior belies an interior complexity too; for instance seen in the the wide double-height space of the library, and the internal connecting aerial catwalks from which visitors can appreciate the central patio.

Photography Alessandra Bello.