The Médiathèque for Tazio Nuvolari, a famous car racer from Mantua, is located in the Northern part of the city centre. The design starting point was the comprehension of the context’s axes, to insert the new body in the rhythmic void-plain of the historical urban texture. The person of Tazio Nuvolari is related to the first half of the 20th century, embodying the futuristic ideas of movement, velocity and modernity.

On this line, the Médiathèque is conceived as an envelope, made by interlocking surfaces, arranged around an elliptical ramp, that recalls both a car race and an engine. The ramp displays as exhibition space and as internal court, giving an answer to the multi-layered history of Mantua.

All the interior spaces are suspended on a system of trusses and connected though a net of hanged metal walkways, that guides a vertical path throughout the building. The auditorium, a suspended wooden volume, intersects the flux of the ramp and proposes as a balancing element pausing velocity. Tazio Nuvolari’s Médiathèque is conceived as a car-race itself, where the building becomes a car and its spaces its moving engines.