This installation for Giovanni and Marella Agnelli Art Gallery hovers atop the historic and enormous former Fiat factory at Lingotto in Turin, overlooking the city of Torino. The building constitutes the third phase of Piano’s 14-year renovation of the factory, into a mixed-use center with a hotel, shops, and conference space. Built in the 1920 by Matte Trucco, the building was the largest and most modern plant in Europe, both architecturally and in terms of mass production capacity. The Lingotto Factory Conversion was the first example of modular construction in reinforced concrete, based on the repetition of three elements: pillars, beams, and floors.

When it was closed down in 1983, the building had such a great symbolic importance that it was essential to give it a new lease on life. The project consisted of radically transforming Lingotto without betraying the spirit and intended use of its premises, while preserving the overall architectural character and monumentality. By creating public facilities such as an auditorium, an exhibition center, a branch of the educational activities, meeting rooms, a shopping center, a hotel, a 2,600-seat cinema complex, as well as Fiat’s headquarters, Lingotto Factory Conversion has turned into a piece of city.

A new, 400-ton structure, dubbed “Scrigno” or “Treasure Chest”, appears to levitate over building’s rooftop track for testing cars. It is a technological marvel, a partly cantilevered, wedge-shaped box, both solid and light with no apparent openings through its steel skin, an oversized flat roof flying above it. Located in the North tower, this section is housing the Agnelli’s art collection. Since Fiat mogul Gianni Agnelli and his wife, Marella, were donating the permanent collection to the museum, which is run by the Palazzo Grassi of Venice (supported with Fiat money), they were very much influenced the design. “Gianni wanted to know the diameter of every bolt,” says Renzo Piano. “A good client-architect relationship is not really about money. It’s about understanding.”

The building’s roof, nicknamed the “flying carpet”, is a light filter made of 16,000 glass fins above the gallery’s own translucent roof, creating a cool, even, impalpable light in which the 25 artworks of the gallery can be contemplated, devoid of any distractions within this peaceful and minimalist interior. This canopy is attached by steel struts to the walls of the gallery and sits about 4 feet above the gallery’s own translucent roof. In the lower roof, glass sits atop layers of movable aluminum slats, 3 m white neon tubes, and, finally, a vellum sunscreen made of “Trevira”, a synthetic fiber tissue.

Additional spotlighting reinforces the mix of artificial light and daylight, so that the paintings and statues are bathed in a luminous glow. The 6-m-high gallery, divided by 3-m-high freestanding partitions, is sparely designed with off-white gypsum-board walls and oak floors, and stainless-steel details. Below, in the reinforced-concrete structure of the factory, a suspended stair of painted steel, wood, and glass links the temporary galleries and other spaces. There is no natural top lighting inside the galleries building, daylight is admitted through existing windows and supplemented by spotlighting.

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