Carlo Ratti Associati (CRA) previously designed a tomato factory that was made out of tomato jars, so it should perhaps come as no surprise that for its planned carbon fiber museum, the firm will be making use of… carbon fiber – on the inside, anyway. Assuming it goes ahead as planned, the museum will be home to what CRA calls the world’s largest archive of acrylic fiber technology.

The MAE Museum is designed in collaboration with Italo Rota and will be located in Piacenza, Italy. Alas, the building itself won’t be made from carbon fiber but the museum will be situated within an existing warehouse that’s being refitted.

Carlo Ratti Associati

The interior though will be all-new and indeed largely constructed using carbon fiber, much of which will be recycled. Visitors will enter into the first section through a curtain-like opening with a big zipper.

“In the first section of the museum, visitors encounter a robotic archive warehouse, lit with dazzling white light and filled with MAE’s historical documents,” explains CRA. “A series of mechanical arms move along the walls to extract photos, technical dossiers, and campaigns from the brand’s 50-year history, and bring these items to a raised central platform, where visitors can sit and browse through them.

“After that, visitors go through a long corridor where they can observe the process by which acrylic fiber is transformed into carbon fiber. This is followed by the second section of the museum dedicated to the use of fiber in contemporary industry. Within a black room enriched by an immersive installation, a set of interactive artifacts explores experimental applications of carbon fiber and shows the most innovative prototypes made with it by car-making and aerospace companies.”

Carlo Ratti Associati

We’ve no word yet on when the MAE Museum is due to be completed but CRA has confirmed to us that the project is expected to be realized, and that more information would be available next year.

Other examples of recent projects from the Italian firm include an elevated park and portable ICUs made from shipping containers.

Source: CRA