The Isozaki Lodge must be realized, it cannot wait any longer. The architects' appeal

" Isozaki’s Loggia must be realized without ifs and buts": this is the appeal that ANCE Florence, the Florence Order of Architects Landscape Planners and Conservators, the Florence Architects Foundation and the Michelucci Foundation have made through an open letter to Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano and Florence Mayor Dario Nardella. Recalling that Arata Isozaki ’s project for theexit of the Uffizi Gallery has been waiting for too many years, with the appeal the signatories trust that there will be a definitive assumption of responsibility to complete the project, won by the famous architect in 1999, otherwise “the credibility, on an international level, of the instrument of the competition procedure is at stake.”

Below is the text of the open letter.

"Honorable Minister Sangiuliano, Most Illustrious Mayor Nardella, we are writing to bring to your attention a well-known affair that has been strongly impacting for years on the historic center of Florence and the Uffizi Museum, and therefore on two visiting cards of our historic cultural heritage that represents us all over the world: the exit of the Uffizi Gallery. The Uffizi Gallery exit was the subject of an international architectural competition in 1998 precisely because of its importance in terms of visibility and location. A competition to which Tadao Ando, Gae Aulenti, Mario Botta, Norman Foster, Frank O. Gehry, Vittorio Gregotti, Hans Hollein, Arata Isozaki, Jean Nouvel, Richard Meier, and Rafael Moneo were invited; and in which Aulenti, Botta, Foster, Gregotti, Hollein, and Isozaki participated. The Isozaki project, selected by a judging committee composed of superintendents Antonio Paolucci, Mario Lolli Ghetti as well as representatives of the city administration, was the winner of the international competition in 1999.

A choice that represented the will and the right of a city and its community to express its contemporaneity in relation to its history, always working, in renewing its identity. Today realizing such a project, donating to Florence a work of contemporary art, becomes a matter of principle as well as cultural, and to do so it is necessary to demonstrate consistency in the choices for the urban development of Florence, opening the door to contemporary architecture designed in this case by architect Arata Isozaki. It is a matter of realizing a functional element, destined also to give an aesthetic and contemporary sense to the Piazza del Grano, characterizing this important space, in which thousands of visitors from all over the world transit every year, finally closing that construction site, which has been open now for an infinite time, with the cranes that still stand out beside the museum complex among the most famous in the world.

Today it is necessary that we take final responsibility for completing a project that has been waiting for too many years. Moreover, in 2020 the project, which had already been revisited and improved by the designer himself, was refinanced with 12 million euros by then Culture Minister Dario Franceschini, including it as part of the national strategic plan “Major Cultural Projects,” launched by the MiC. Today we sense the danger of a new step backward, which takes shape with the ministerial hypothesis of a “green wall” to replace Isozaki’s Loggia. A “green wall,” poorly contextualized and difficult to maintain, as already experimented in Florence in the rehabilitation of the Murate complex, against a steel and stone structure that, in the intentions of the designers who imagined it 25 years ago, would re-propose the Loggia dei Lanzi in Piazza del Grano with the same original dimensions or proportions. It really does not seem to us a viable alternative for Florence and the national Architectural heritage, despite the fact that it caresses the green soul of all of us.

We therefore trust, Mr. Minister and Mr. Mayor, that today you, as custodians and guardians of the heritage of this magnificent country of ours, can go beyond the controversy and after a quarter of a century realize the work without any more “ifs” or “buts.” The credibility, internationally, of the instrument of the bankruptcy procedure also depends on it. The signatories of this appeal make themselves available to organize a conference on the topic of “Contemporary Architecture and Historic Cities” and promote a series of cultural activities to enhance dialogue and discussion on such a complex and sensitive issue."

The Isozaki Lodge must be realized, it cannot wait any longer. The architects' appeal

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