Last week in Grottammare, Italy, the schematic design for ANIMA was unveiled, the first work in Italy by renowned firm Bernard Tschumi Architects, commissioned by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Ascoli Piceno and the Municipality of Grottammare.

ANIMA is a cultural center that will be built in Grottammare, a city in the province of Ascoli Piceno, intended to generate stronger ties between the people and the territory. The concept intends to associate its image to the most diverse manifestations of local culture, which find expression through artistic, gastronomic and environmental means. In addition to elaborating with immense precision and originality the theme by which the interior spaces are organized, Tschumi has proposed an artifact that reworks the notion of facade as an indispensable tool with which to reconfigure space. Oscillating between the figuative and the abstract, the building reinforces the identity of the region at even its conceptual stage.

Now, after the presentation of the schematic design, the team of professionals coordinated by architect Alfonso Giancotti has begun to undertake the next stages of the design process of ANIMA, whose construction is intended to start in approximately a year, early 2014, and expected to conclude by 2016.