PALAZZO DELLA RAGIONE

20 February 2009

The renovation project, which restored the Palazzo della Ragione in Verona to its ancient beauty, was designed by Tobia Scarpa and sponsored by the Fondazione Cariverona. A project carried out with simple techniques respectful of ancient practices, using modern technology whose natural aggressiveness was mitigated to a minimum.

The spaces themselves were restored to their original form, “well aware that in the palimpsest, the origins are lost, stratified, mixed”.
In describing the renovation project, Tobia Scarpa speaks of the “trifora windows on the piano nobile reframed with a thin window structure”; “of lightweight masonry or gypsum board walls, redesigned, framed, with a steel lip, to delineate new spaces”; “of the floor paved in large grey marble tiles that run through all the exhibition rooms to create unity”; “of the ceiling which opens towards the sky in one point like a telescope to frame the tower of the Lamberti”.
“But – reflects Scarpa in the end – architecture must always bow to the functions, and in this architecture the main function is exhibition space. The risk was that the interior architecture would be too obvious, too distinctive, or that the exhibition structures would be flexible but indistinct. For this reason, after lengthy discussions with the future management of the Palazzo, we designed metal structures for Alucore panels measuring two and a half by four meters, which may be used in either a vertical or horizontal position, to guarantee a flexible distribution, and electrical power to light the paintings, to power any digital signals and to control the structural panels for the protection of the artworks hung on them.
Every exhibition will thus be in a position to develop its own strategy to enhance these intense and in some ways extraordinary spaces of the Palazzo della Ragione”.
Great importance was therefore attributed to the lighting solutions for which architect Tobia Scarpa used the Ray system, by Mizar, a project conceived to solve the problem of regulating the intensity of the cone of light to create a balanced lighting solution.