Vittorio Sgarbi on the Uffizi “The Isozaki loggia will not be built”

The ministry, with all due respect to the director of the Uffizi, has placed a tombstone on the project of the Isozaki Loggia at the entrance to the museum. Vittorio Sgarbi, Undersecretary for Cultural Heritage, stated: «That project won’t take place, I don’t want it, the minister doesn’t want it, the building belongs to the state. It’s a battle won.” And he added: «Rather, and I spoke about it with the general manager, a competition of great gardeners should be held, a great architecture should be created that creates an exit, a kind of tunnel, like a gallery in the greenery. It’s easy, inexpensive, beautiful to look at, that’s it.”

And Eike Schmidt? «He deferred to the will of the state, just talk about it with superintendent Ranaldi to imagine calling excellent architects to imagine a simple but fairly stable architecture in which you build an exit».

A project with a troubled history, like many in Italy. Recovered several times and then abandoned. Both defended and opposed. Now, however, it seems definitively archived. The loggia designed by Arata Isozaki and Andrea Maffei won the design competition announced way back in 1998 (the same year in which the competition for the Maxxi was announced), in which great names in architecture took part (Gae Aulenti, Mario Botta, Norman Foster, Vittorio Gregotti and Hans Hollein).