The Alfa Romeo Museum A Landmark Identity for a Historic Brand

By Caterina Testa - 24 March 2016

The renovation of the Alfa Romeo Museo in Arese, Milan metropolitan area, is part of a broader programme to re-launch this top-end sports car brand. The Museum - Alfa Romeo’s only formal commemorative facility in Milan - is the fulcrum of the brand’s new lease of life and its forward thrust based on the automotive company’s proud tradition of expertise and excellence. The renovation of the old Alfa Romeo headquarters and the new add-on designed by Benedetto Camerana give concrete form to the whole company turn-around project.

Converting the 1960’s headquarters into a museum brought together several projects at different scales. On the broadest level, the programme had to contend with a large industrial site located close to a busy motorway. Architecturally, the new project had to take into account what was already there, creating a user-friendly museum setting where everything recalls the company’s long and proud design and engineering history.

No stranger to this sort of all-embracing project, Camerana has created a “brand architecture” that proclaims Alfa Romeo’s corporate identity at every level of the project.

Alfa Romeo’s renewed corporate identity is conveyed throughout by the company’s signature red. A long sinuous contemporary style construction leads visitors from the car park to the museum entrance. A canopied walkway, it becomes a telescope through which to view the nearby motorway, continuing on to link the bookshop, archive, events area and cafeteria on the ground floor, showroom and museum entrance on the first floor. Everything about the add-on speaks of Alfa Romeo design: color, metal shell and sinuous lines. Bodywork features, the special rear-view mirrors and other details are all referenced in a style that is part retro, part futuristic.

The overall project and the scrupulous re-qualification of this listed brown site is the result of good...