Glory days for Mario Cucinella, 63 year old founder & design director of MCA – Mario Cucinella Architects. On Thursday evening he was among the winners of the Compasso d’Oro Adi 2024 for the project of the art museum of the Luigi Rovati Foundation in Milan. The motivation for the recognition, created 70 years ago, exalts the “museographic and museological display through design” and the “emotionally engaging environment”. Then, 24 hours later, another emotion with the inauguration (yesterday, in the presence, among others, of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella) of the E-Building in Maranello, a new step – in which “innovation and design they are intertwined” underlined the starchitect – of the Ferrari village which will be the factory of all engines, including electric ones.
Just a couple of examples of the multiple interventions signed by Studio MCA, which brings together over 100 professionals in two offices, Milan and Bologna, engaged in all continents, including Africa (with One Airport Square in Ghana) and Asia (Sino -Italian Ecological and Energy Efficient Building in China). Without forgetting Italy, however, with a church (in Mormanno), university buildings (from Aosta to Rome) and a very strong imprint in Milan, with the Mind masterplan, in the grounds of Expo 2015, the new multifunctional districts of SeiMilano and Santa Giulia, the “Vertical Nest” of UniPol in Porta Nuova which will soon be inaugurated. Among the construction sites underway in Osaka for Expo 2025, there is the Italian Pavilion which will be – Cucinella promises – “a stage on which to show the culture, history and innovation of our country to a global audience”.
Cucinella, however, everything started in Genoa.
“Yes, even though I was born in Palermo, I spent the years from middle school to university in the Ligurian capital. The choice of the Faculty of Architecture was more than an obligatory choice after art high school: it came as an epiphany after having I saw children playing happily between their school and a square. In those years, in the summer I went to Renzo Piano’s studio to be a “boy”. of a workshop”. And there, in that “captivating” atmosphere, my vocation became a passion”.
What is the common thread of your projects?
“I would say attention to the quality of architecture, well-being, and the environment. At MCA we want not only to make projects but to execute them well. I am honored that this commitment has been recognized with the Compasso d’Oro, a very prestigious award. Of course it is It’s important to find the interlocutor who gives you the opportunity to dare: this has happened with the Luigi Rovati foundation.”
The Foundation’s art museum is among the new entries in the exhibition spaces under the Madonnina. What inspired you?
“The museum space is inside a historic nineteenth-century building in Corso Venezia. It has been completely renovated but the idea was to transform the building with an unconventional project to offer a long journey into art. The Etruscan tombs of Cerveteri were the inspired by underground architecture, a basement that we built and also extends below the Palace garden. The Etruscan collection is housed there, with vases, urns and bronzes, then the journey continues above, on the Piano Nobile, with also the works of Fontana, Picasso and Warhol”.
MCA has also signed the SeiMilano project on the extreme western outskirts of the city, with homes also in subsidized housing and at prices that are not impossible (around 3 thousand euros per square meter). Will private operations be enough to guarantee accessibility to the house?
“Conventional housing is a first step but I don’t think we can ask the private sector to make a social effort. The problem is that the public body has given up its role, while it should go back to worrying about building and managing public housing. There would also be a calming effect on the private market: at the moment only private operators decide the prices. In France, Austria and Germany, social policies have always continued to protect the accessibility ranges.”
