Federiciana Library

Architect Mario Cucinella and Mario Cucinella Architects was called to oversee the design of the recovery and new expansion of the historic urban library.

The restoration project of the Federiciana Library, adjacent to the Baroque Church of San Pietro in Valle, is aimed at reorganizing its pre-existing functions, through the reorganization of the offices and the precious volumes collected there since the second half of the 1600s. The project preserves the famous “Sala dei Globi” with its wooden shelves and its furnishings.

While the recovery project aimed at preserving the historic building, the new extension takes shape from the void created by the demolition of the pre-existing modern building and, in continuity with the contemporary urban design, marks the step between the historic and the modern Fano by opening up towards the port and the waterfront.

The new volume, like a transparent casket, welcomes and guards four levels, plus a basement for the vault of the volumes to be preserved, and a panoramic terrace that opens onto large visual wings.

The public entrance leads to the ground floor which houses a conference room and some reception and service spaces. The internal architecture winds through cantilevered internal terraces, ‘suspended’ and slightly staggered, from the first level, which also hosts an event space, up to the fourth, to finally culminate in the roof with a panoramic terrace overlooking the sea. A fluid and continuous architectural gesture draws the organic forms of the terraces that welcome spaces dedicated to reading, stretched outwards, relating the internal architecture with the urban landscape, up to the blue horizon of the sea.

The landscape design project, common thread between the various levels and the terraces, is designed as a public space in continuity with the external green area that existed before the new extension, and sees its beginning in the winter garden on the ground floor.

A careful climate study accompanied the project. The optimization of the exposure of the main facade of the new volume, towards the north-west, to protect itself from direct solar radiation, has resulted in optimal natural lighting, for the benefit of greater visual comfort in the reading spaces, a reduced use of artificial lighting and efficient natural ventilation that takes advantage of the breezes coming from the north in summer and during the mid-seasons.

Client: Municipality of Fano and Fondazione Montanari
Type: Refurbishment and extension
Project: Mario Cucinella Architects
Team: Mario Cucinella (Founder and Creative Director), Michele Olivieri (Project Director), Francesco Visco (Project Manager), Elisabetta Pettazzoni, Giuseppe Panzarini, Eugenio De Nicola (Model Maker)
Photo: Mario Cucinella Architects
Virtual Model/Images: Mario Cucinella Architects, Bologna
Physical Model: Mario Cucinella Architects, Bologna
Structural engineering: Maffeis Engeneering
Mep engineering: Technion s.r.l.
Project functions: Library, Archives, Meeting Room, Reading Rooms, Cafeteria, Service Areas, Offices
Gross area: 3000 sqm