Bologna, here is the new wing of the Academy of Fine Arts with a window on the city

Ribbon cutting on October 28th with the artist Luigi Ontani, to whom the Academy will award the first Honorary Diploma in its history

BOLOGNA – About 2,000 square meters of surface area on four floors to house classrooms, laboratories and a large room for students. The Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna inaugurates the new Irnerio Wing: ribbon cutting on Monday with the artist Luigi Ontani, to whom the Academy will award the first Honorary Diploma in its history. Thus comes to a conclusion an intervention “that brings to life in a contemporary way, adequate to today, spaces intended for training and teaching according to the latest generation criteria”, declared today in a press conference the president of the Academy, Rita Finzi.

The building that was the object of the intervention dates back to the mid-1950s and was born as a result of the collaboration between the sculptor Fabio Farpi Vignoli (who also designed the adjacent theater intended for teaching scenography) and the architect Melchiorre Bega. Known as the “former high school”, since until the 1980s it housed the art high school, it then passed to the Academy but since then it had never been renovated. This is the area where the Tpo social centre was born in 1995, an acronym for Teatro polivalente occupato, then cleared out in 2000. Now the spaces of the main building have been transformed to house the classrooms and, in addition, on via Irnerio the hall for students has been created by closing the old access portico with large glass walls. “A transparency that allows students, when they come here to read, study, work on the computer, eat or chat – Finzi emphasizes – to look onto Via Irnerio and towards the botanical garden but also to be seen by the city”.

All this after a little over a year of work, explains Finzi, but it took four since the Board of Directors approved the resolution to start the intervention. In short, “building is the minimum“, says the president: the real challenge “is the complex administrative and bureaucratic process that we are forced to follow, which means disproportionate times and therefore costs. This is the basis of the inefficiency that our country and especially the public administration suffer from”. This is due to “a cumbersome and needlessly redundant regulatory framework” and the need to proceed while “always under the control of the Court of Auditors”, adds the president.
But it was worth it, assures the director Cristina Francucci, who is about to conclude her mandate. “The rooms where we taught were really in a very critical situation – Francucci says – especially with regards to safety”. And now the spaces are not only renovated, thanks also to the help of the students themselves who collaborated in clearing away the materials, “but we have also managed – Francucci remarks – to create new classrooms and laboratories”. A great result because “the quality of the spaces always goes hand in hand with the quality of learning”, underlines the director. The whole thing “was born as a safety and maintenance project but then little by little it transformed into a real renovation with significant structural, technical and plant involvement”, explains the architect Emilio Lomi who supervised the intervention. And the nearby theater? “We participated in a very important tender from the ministry and by the end of the year we will know if we will be given the funding to renovate it”, explains Finzi, so that the theater can become “a jewel in the crown for the Academy”.