Via Gustavo Modena 13: KHI campus in Florence grows with addition of new building

The KHI is one of the oldest and most renowned research institutes for the history of art and architecture worldwide and has been part of the Max Planck Society (MPG) since 2002. Research at the Institute develops on a transcultural to global horizon, with a broad interdisciplinary spectrum ranging from the study of artists such as Leonardo to design and AI, from medieval architecture and church decorations in Georgia, Mexican feather art, and early modern urbanism to botany, ecology, the Mediterranean region and disasters as fields of art historical research, to image, thing and media theory as well as collaborations with contemporary artists.

With the Palazzo at Via Gustavo Modena 13, the Institute gains a further location in the city in the area marked by Piazza di San Marco, Piazza della Libertà, and Borgo Pinti / Giardino della Gherardesca. Important educational and research institutions are located here, including the University of Florence, the Botanical Gardens, significant natural history collections, the new center of the European University Institute, the Archaeological Museum, etc. The other premises of the KHI, Palazzo Capponi-Incontri (since 1964) and Casa Rosselli (since 1971) at Via Giuseppe Giusti 36–44, Casa Zuccari (since 1987) at Via Gino Capponi 22 and Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai in Piazza della Santissima Annunziata (partly rented since 2009) are also located in this area of Florence, which is so densely populated in terms of the history of knowledge. This also reflects the scientific and cultural integration of the KHI in the city and its institutions with numerous collaborations.

Via Gustavo Modena 13

The KHI’s new Palazzo on Via Gustavo Modena is part of this ‘campus’. Its premises house the entire photographic collection of the Institute (Photothek), large parts of the Library (approx. 40%), each with consultation areas, as well as two research groups, plus seminar rooms and social rooms for the users and employees of the Institute.

The building is located in the historic center of Florence between Piazza San Marco and the Viali. From the second half of the 19th century, the area underwent drastic urban changes in line with architect Giuseppe Poggi’s project for Florence as the capital of the Kingdom of Italy (1865–1871). In 1863, the city acquired the necessary land from the neighboring convent of San Domenico del Maglio to create Via Gustavo Modena, named after the theater actor and protagonist of the Risorgimento. The subdivided plots were later auctioned off to private individuals who built on them in the last two decades of the 19th century, including the Palazzo at number 13. Before it was purchased at auction by the Max Planck Foundation in 2015 and transferred to the Max Planck Society in 2018, the four-story building overlooking an inner garden was owned by the Region of Tuscany and used for a library and archives on the lower floors and for residential purposes on the upper floors.

Architecture for research in the humanities

The renovation project was coordinated by the architecture firm Passaleva Associati, led by Marco and Michele Passaleva, in close collaboration with the MPG’s Construction Department and continuous consultation with the KHI. The work, which began in February 2021, was completed in a record time of two years for the structural part and covered a gross area of around 2,400 square meters. It was decided to intervene as little as possible in the structure of the building and to preserve the essential features of the original distribution. In this lies also the particular complexity of the project, which was to convert a building structure from the second half of the 19th century to meet the requirements of the KHI’s research activities in a cost-conscious manner.

One of the technically impressive achievements is the creation of an underground area in the right wing of the building with an area of around 200 square meters, which houses the KHI Library’s journals. All building floors were structurally reinforced to accommodate the Library and photographic collections. Floating floors were installed, which not only conceal the kilometers of cables and rails, but also allow a high degree of flexibility in the rooms.

The façades were restored, and the reliefs on the entablatures were recreated by a Florentine plasterer using a technique that is rare today. Frescoed decorations from the 19th century were discovered in the ceilings of the first and second floors, which were partially uncovered. The 20th-century elevator in the middle of the staircase was removed, and the staircase was restored to its original form. On the first floor, the former veranda was carefully restored and made energy-efficient. The Library and Photothek shelves, made of painted aluminum and equipped with an integrated lighting system, extend over approximately 3,000 linear meters and were specially adapted for each room.

The building was handed over to the KHI on March 1, 2024, after a great team effort led by the MPG’s Construction Department, which involved teams from Germany and Italy as well as a large pool of companies collaborating at all levels. The KHI was also actively involved at all times. The relocation of the book and photographic material posed an enormous logistical challenge and also required (and enabled) a reorganization of the Library at the premises on Via Giuseppe Giusti. This meant that almost every book in the Library had to be moved. Moving the 630,000 photographs from the Piano Nobile of Palazzo Grifoni was particularly challenging; the Photothek’s negative archive was transported in climate-controlled crates to avoid exposing the extremely sensitive material to major temperature fluctuations.

A place to store over 630,000 photographs and study photo archives

The KHI Photothek moved in its entirety into the new building. With over 630,000 photographs, it is one of the most important collections of documentary photography on the history of Italian art and architecture. It is also a research center and laboratory that plays a central role in the international and transdisciplinary debate on the role of photographic archives in research and in 21st-century societies. The building offers users consultation areas as well as rooms for catalogs, filing cabinets and other archive material. In addition to climate rooms for rare photographs, the Photothek also has a studio and an analog and digital photo lab. The analog photo laboratory, which is equipped with a darkroom and a wet room, is used for teaching purposes and for the restoration of historical photographs.

New climate chambers for storing photo negatives from 1860 to the present day

Two climate chambers were set up in the new premises to store the archive of photo negatives, which require special conditions in terms of stable temperature and humidity. The two chambers, one with storage conditions of 5 °C and 35 % relative humidity, the other with 15 °C and 35 % relative humidity, were designed with the expertise of the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics in Stuttgart. They store a collection of around 55,000 acetate or polyester films and glass plates—from the 1860s to the 21st century.

A new home for over 160,000 volumes

The KHI library has moved a substantial part of its collection (approx. 40%) to its new home. The basement forms the heart of the collections, for which rooms with compact shelving on rails have been set up. The more than 50,000 volumes of periodicals were placed there—a constantly expanding collection with around 1,000 subscription journals. The periodicals area is 1.7 km long: 1.5 km for the current collection and a further 200 m for future growth.

The new building houses various sections of the Library, including those dedicated to Italian artists born after 1870 (including a special collection on Futurism), catalogs of exhibitions of contemporary Italian artists and the extensive section of general art-historical literature. The collection is complemented by the Photography Reference Library dedicated to the history and theory of photography, which, together with the Photothek, makes Via Gustavo Modena 13 a study and research center for the history of contemporary art and photography.

The move has created space in the buildings on Via Giusti for a clearer arrangement of the holdings and significantly improved overall consultation options. Both locations are open to external researchers in addition to researchers from the KHI itself. A transport system allows users to order books between locations. The move of part of the books to the new building will also enable the refurbishment of the large lecture hall at Via Giuseppe Giusti 38.

Research on the ethics of images and the relationship between form and object

The third floor of the new building houses two of the three independent research groups currently working at the KHI. The Research Group Ethico-Aesthetics of the Visual, led by art historian and philosopher Hana Gründler, investigates the relationships between art, visuality, and ethics. Against the background of current socio-political questions about the power of images and seeing, the team develops an ethico-aesthetics of the visual in a systematic and methodologically broad way, while also taking into consideration trans-historical phenomena.

As part of the Max Planck Society’s “Lise Meitner” Excellence Program, the Coded Objects research group, led by architect and architectural historian Anna-Maria Meister, investigates how everyday objects are ‘programmed’ by design by examining the material traces of the processes that produced them. Using ‘form’ as an epistemic starting point, the group investigates how objects are coded through material and spatial practices.

A state-of-the-art IT infrastructure

As part of the renovation, the buildings on Via Gustavo Modena and Via Giuseppe Giusti were connected to the powerful Italian network of the GARR consortium with a ring connection, linking both sites via a redundant internet connection. In addition, both sites now have real data centers operating in parallel, making it possible to synchronize data and systems via an ultra-fast network connection. A total of 45 km of copper cable and 5 km of fiber optic cable were laid in the building, making a total of around 50 km of cable for the internal network and more than 21 km of power cables.

Rooms for families and children, events and encounters

There is a family room on the ground floor of the new building: it has a workstation for a parent and games for baby or child as well as a changing table and a place for breastfeeding. A seminar room and a meeting room next to it, both equipped with modern event technology, are available for small and medium-sized events and seminars. On the first floor of the building, a spacious lounge with a kitchen and a large terrace provide a common space for employees and external users.

The interior garden is the result of a careful balance between sustainability and urban history. When planting, special attention was paid to getting by with little water and care in the summer months: begonias, perovskias, plumbago and laburnum as well as small laurel hedges and a dichondra lawn. In the middle of the garden is a magnolia tree that was already part of the gardens of the former monastery of San Domenico del Maglio, which was kept alive during the construction work. And what looks like a container at the end of the garden actually conceals a 15,000-liter cistern, which is used for the new building’s fire protection system.

Opening event of the new Institute building on October 21, 2024 with guests from research, culture, and politics

On October 21, 2024, the new building was ‘opened’ from 2:30 pm for invited guests, who could visit the spaces and take part in short guided tours. On this occasion, photographs by Bärbel Reinhard, Martino Marangoni, Daniela Tartaglia and Giuseppe Toscano (from the Fondazione Studio Marangoni) taken during the renovation of the building were exhibited. The photographs are also the focus of an online exhibition of the Photothek TRANSITIONS: Via Modena 13, published on October 14, 2024.

The actual ceremony took place from 4:30 pm: short musical improvisations were be followed by greetings from representatives of the MPG, the Consulate General and Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, the City and Region, as well as the architects and members of the scientific community. After the performance “A l’alta fantasia” of Dante’s Paradiso, Canto XXXIII by the Associazione culturale Culter, the afternoon ended with a reception at Via Giuseppe Giusti 38.