LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura
Lakeside arts centre of 2015 housing the MASI art museum, a concert hall and a theatre.
LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura opened on 12 September 2015 on the site of the former Grand Hotel Palace, beside Lake Lugano. The Ticinese architect Ivano Gianola won an international competition for the scheme in 2002, ahead of more than a hundred entries. His design wraps a new stone-clad volume around the surviving convent wing of Santa Maria degli Angioli and opens a public square, Piazza Bernardino Luini, between the town and the waterfront, with a glazed entrance hall that deliberately blurs the line between inside and out.
The centre brings together three institutions. The Museo d'arte della Svizzera italiana, known as MASI, occupies about 2,500 square metres over three floors and shows modern and contemporary art alongside holdings from the region. A hall seating roughly a thousand serves both as a concert auditorium and as a theatre, with adjustable acoustics, and is the home of the Orchestra della Svizzera italiana. A smaller studio space, the Teatrostudio, hosts drama, dance and talks.
Highlights
- Designed by Ivano Gianola and opened in September 2015
- MASI galleries spread over three floors beside the lake
- Concert and theatre hall for about a thousand people
- Adjoining the sixteenth-century church of Santa Maria degli Angioli
