A new building
The building was donated to Reggio Emilia Town Council by Anna Maria Ternelli Gerra for the creation of a new arts centre for the town dedicated to her husband, the artist Marco Gerra (1925-2000). The ex-hotel Cairoli, situated in piazza XXV Aprile, was renovated with an innovative project by the architect Christian Gasparini.
The project was aimed at developing the urban and architectural potential of the space, seen as a link between two parts of the historic centre: the square behind Teatro Ariosto to the South and the lower space juxtaposed with the Cavallerizza to the North.
The result is a new urban solution that creates new routes and scenarios in a part of the city destined to play in a central role in the historic centre, with the urban recovery project for Piazza della Vittoria.
Piazza XXV Aprile and the new arts centre complement and regenerate each other in a temporal-spatial dialectic between emptiness and fullness, background and scenery, transparency and opacity, stillness and movement and they return to life as dynamic elements whose interrelation transforms the empty space of the square into something that is “full”, a space where people meet, cross and stop.
Inside the Centre, the corner staircase connects and distributes the entrance hall on the ground floor with the meeting room and information on multimedia displays; on the first floor there is a multifunctional room for conferences, screenings and exhibitions, with an open-air cafeteria and artists’ studios with balconies; the second floor has temporary exhibitions spaces with an archive room for the Fotografia Europea project and on the third floor there are additional temporary exhibition spaces and a studio-office.
