Vittorio Sgarbi: «Isozaki Lodge? It looks like a mattress base. A garden is better than the Uffizi»

In an interview with Fabio Fazio in Che tempo che fa Vittorio Sgarbi reiterated his no to Isozaki’s new Uffizi release by relaunching with a new proposal: let’s make ourselves a garden. «The architects who demand respect for the competition are right – said the undersecretary – Isozaki won with this horrid canopy that looks like a mattress base, twice as high as Vasari’s loggias. We have to pay for the project, but we don’t have to. And it is not a topic that concerns the Municipality but the Uffizi and the State. We have allocated 12 million, we can also not allocate it. I called the landscape architect Paolo Pejrone to tell him to make us a garden, with an exit like a hedge, a simple thing, a garden in the center of Florence. Why must we allow to do what no private person could do? Try to imagine if Gucci, Prada or Ferragamo asked for this thing here… Should the State build this shelter with the arrogance of power because it has money to throw away? No, let’s do it decently, moreover, the project is old, it’s from 1998… This is my serene and conservative position, but it’s not against Isozaki, there are many beautiful projects that are being created».

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