Mario Labò and the Various Design Proposals for the Oriental Art Museum of Genoa

The analysis of the different projects formulated in the middle of the last century for the Edoardo Chiossone Museum of Oriental Art in Genoa constitutes an opportunity to recognize some significant traces of the previous phases designed by Mario Labò in the spatial characteristics of the building. The research was focused on trying to find the original drawings, from the first version of 1948, characterized by pure forms typical of pre-war modernism, to the configurations currently in use that were conceived in the version formulated between 1952 and 1955. We want to emphasize the importance of this project from both an architectural and historical point of view, analyzing the relationship with the urban park but above all with the study of the pre-existing nineteenth-century villa; the latter thanks to its spatial characteristics becomes an explicit reference for the project. The building built in 1971 shows an original spatiality of a unitary and continuous museum itinerary that unfolds in a development similar to the double helix of some ancient sixteenth-century stairs. This version is updated through the Italian museographic development after World War II. This contribution shows the architectural surveys made to make a comparison with the documentary data that bring out the importance of the museum itinerary, the latter based on the definitive solution of the stairs, as crucial elements of the project. In the latest version, however, a spatial conception is visible and evokes the spaces of Japanese architecture