FROM DESERTED JAIL TO A HUB FOR CONTEMPORARY ART
FROM DESERTED JAIL TO A HUB FOR CONTEMPORARY ART
LEARN MORE ABOUT FROM DESERTED JAIL TO A HUB FOR CONTEMPORARY ART AND DISOVER THIS ABANDONED PRISON THAT’S BECAME ART HOT SPOT
FROM DESERTED JAIL TO A HUB FOR CONTEMPORARY ART
The abandoned Fort of Santa Caterina towers above the rough island of Favignana in southern Sicily. A century after it was closed, this old jail with vistas of the Mediterranean that no prisoner could reasonably deserve is about to be reopened by the worldwide Young Architects Competitions organization. In collaboration with the Municipality of Favignana and the Italian government, the YAC has organized the “Art Prison” competition, wherein young architects worldwide are invited to submit designs for the 500-year-old compound’s successful transformation into a modern art museum.
The goal of the contest is to reimagine Santa Caterina (the fortress and eponymous peak on which it stands) as a sprawling, multipurpose art center in the idiom of the groovy Kröller-Müller Museum in The Netherlands and Japan’s Benesse Art Site Naoshima. According to the competition organizers, designs should include luxury hotel accommodations, a working art atelier, exhibit spaces, and a high-end restaurant where “star chefs will reinterpret local tradition.” And teams are expected to incorporate the entire property into their proposals, including the mile-long switchback footpath that leads to the town below.
All of this will be no small feat. If the pictures don’t make it obvious, this place is rough. And probably haunted. It’s also considered structurally unsound and, as such, unavailable for site visits (although daring tourists have been making the zigzag trek up Santa Caterina for years and most have lived to write about it on TripAdvisor).
Competing teams—at least one member of which must be under the age of 35—will submit their designs to a panel of architectural heavy-hitters, including Daniel Libeskind of Studio Libeskind, Manuel Aires Mateus of Aires Mateus, Felix Perasso of Snøhetta, and João Luís Carrilho da Graça of Carrilho da Graça Arquitectos. And the big winner, to be announced on April 30, will pocket a cash prize of €20,000 (about US$25,000). Registration is open; the entry fee is €75. Pertinent dates, rules, 2-D and 3-D renderings, and a pile of photographs are available here.
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