The plan to add a huge new modernist portico to Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, the most controversial building project of recent times in Italy, is to go ahead.

After nine years of bitter argument and despite the rage of Florentines including the opera and film director Franco Zeffirelli, the dramatic and imposing new portico at the side of Italy’s most famous art museum was given approval this week by the city’s super-intendent of architectonic goods, Paola Grifoni.

Its designer is Arata Isozaki, the celebrated avant garde architect from Kyushu in Japan whose other works in Italy include the ice hockey stadium for Turin’s 2006 Winter Olympics. In 1998 he won the competition to design the museum’s new exit against top foreign practices, including Britain’s Norman Foster and Hans Hollein of Austria.

His solution was simple, bold and arresting: a huge cantilevered canopy fanning out from the gallery, supported by slim rectangular pilasters. There was no attempt to integrate the new work with the Renaissance original: the contrast between old and modern was deliberately stark.

Read full article (The Independent, August 10, 2007)

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