MoDus Architects created a triple addition to the religious campus in the 12th century to house museum and exhibition facilities.
Although Novasella Abbey dates back to 1142, it still plays a 360-degree role in the life of the South Tyrol region outside Bressanone. The complex is a center for spiritual, scientific, viticulture, community, tourism and commercial activities in the picturesque Alpine community. As in the village, these disparate projects are evident in the nearly 900 years of architectural construction: the various separate buildings range from chapels, residences, and classrooms for boarding school students to a library of historical interest and one of the oldest active wineries in the world. This June, a new entrance and annex opened in three converted adjacent buildings to host the Abbey Museum, a collection of cultural artifacts that includes art pieces, religious statues, liturgical objects, frescoes, and even scientific instruments. Designed by Cairo-born Sandy Attia and Trieste-born Matteo Scaniol of MoDus Architects, the project – equal parts demolished, restored and renovated – embraces and unifies the monastery’s apparent heterogeneity.
On a dense and sprawling estate at the same time, the project transforms into unrelated buildings – a storeroom, a warehouse, and a laundry service room or Lavatorium—in what Scagnol aptly describes as “trichromatic.” The first building now serves as the museum’s entry hall, hosting the box office, the museum shop, and the permanent exhibition. The second is a hall with a staircase and elevator tower wrapped in a botanical-themed artwork by Paul Renner, while the third contains a temporary exhibition space and event room. However, from the outside, the only evidence of change is a high, black-clad copper-clad bridge between the buildings.
Even as they echoed the architectural diversity outside, Attia and Scagnoll used limited materials inside—copper, glass, concrete, and wood—to blend new elements with existing ones such as newly exposed wooden cornices and rough plasterwork. The scheme amplifies the contemplative atmosphere while establishing connections and nuances between the old and the new. “We found similarities between the materials,” Attia says. “Exposed and bush-hammered concrete is a reinterpretation of the ragged stucco work, the ceiling rafters were rethought in the specially designed lighting element suspended above the ticket office, the copper gutters found throughout the Novacella were reconfigured as a full facade, and the bottle bottoms glazed that filters light through small openings In historic structures he reuses the large openings of the rustic storeroom as bay windows.”
From an entry hall now suitable for gathering and dispersal, the museum inhabits disparate parts of the monastery with connections that would otherwise be indistinguishable. The addition provides a clear starting and ending point while guiding and transporting visitors through various historical eras. “The architecture itself, however, is conservative,” Attia explains. “It feeds itself in current conditions to elevate mundane structures into a cultural experience that fuses historical and contemporary vocabulary.”
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