The redevelopment and recovery project of the Ex Teatro di Chiuppano is the result of the conservative restoration of the existing building, of its expansion and the provision of new external public spaces.
The key to interpreting the intervention lies in the dialectic between pre-existence and new construction, a theme that has guided all design choices. The basic idea is to combine with the existing building, witness of a precise twentieth-century historical era, a new artefact that testifies to the contemporary, in which rationalist tendencies blend with classic elements of the local context.
The Ex-Theater artifact is located in an area that was historically included between the railway embankment (now via del Casello) and via Roma. Its planimetric position places it as a barycentric in a system of public buildings: it is in close relation with the nursery school facing via Roma and, following the ancient route of the railway, is linked to the current school buildings. Thanks to this peculiarity, the building as a whole, Ex-Theater and expansion, has been conceived as a container that can serve both as a classroom for schools and as a multi-purpose space for the entire Chiuppano community. The relationship between the two appearances, Ex-Theater and enlargement is played by opposing materiality and lightness, opacity and transparency: the contrast emphasizes the peculiarities of the two volumes.