Al Khalisa. New museum of Islamic Art in Palermo

Al Khalisa was the name of the stronghold built by arabs following the conquest of Palermo.\r\nIt’s an attempt to narrate an episode of Sicilian history, following in the footsteps of those who unraveled it for the first time.\r\nIt’s the intention of giving back to the city, through architecture, a place to contemplate and investigate its own past

The project originates from the intention to rewire the fabric of the city. The compact volume of the museum and the elongated volume of the documentary center face each other along Via di Santa Teresa, the street. Beginning at Piazza della Kalsa, to the south the cue gap allows access to the library; continuing, to the north the front of the museum, which recedes to the benefit of the oratory loggia, opens to allow entrance to the lobby; still to the south, along the blind elevation of the ducumental center, a perforation crosses the factory and leads to the garden, the courtyard. At the opposite end, where the layout bends and the street continues into Via dello Spasimo, northward access is gained to the piazza, where the Bianchi oratory and the museum face each other, surrounded by residences; finally to the south, where the urban fabric becomes more rarefied, a portal allows access to the auditorium. Providing a new venue to house the collection developed by Salinas is the goal toward which the entire design proposal moves. The museum originates from a compact volume, a squared parallelepiped, which deforms in contact with the city: the edge opposed to the loggia retracts, the faces rotate and break, granting entrance to the building. The factory retraces the traces of the blocks between Via Savona and Via Santa Teresa and consists of three above-ground levels, which house the exhibition route, and a basement, reserved for warehouses and technical rooms. The scanning of the floors is suggested, on the outside, by the variation in the finish of the exposed concrete: the footprints of the formwork lengthen and become wider; the rough, bumpy skin of the basement gives way to the neat imprint of the wooden planks on the second floor, and then becomes a smooth, polished surface on the top level. Yellow calcarenite, which characterizes at a glance the image of Palermo, emerges as a common thread in the city's architecture.