P—028—PRK
ParCO
Reference
P—028—PRK
Project
Art space and masterplan
Location
Parma, Italy
Client
Comune di Parma - Parma io ci sto'
Consultants
The Place Bureau
Status
In Progress
Introduction
ParCO is Parma’s bold new home for contemporary art , a place to cultivate culture through participatory practice.
Through an unexpected design language, we transform the building into a park. In the transepts, courtyards and gardens host life and work, while the main nave, articulated by reconfigurable movable partitions, becomes an ever-changing art path and, like nature itself, is in constant evolution.
Parma Contemporanea (ParCO) is a bold initiative transforming Parma’s historic Ospedale Vecchio into a dynamic centre for contemporary art, creativity, and cultural dialogue. Commissioned by the City Council and Parma io ci sto’, the project reimagines both the mission and architecture of this monumental site. Rooted in Parma’s vibrant Oltretorrente district, just across from the city’s monumental centre, ParCO is envisioned as an open and evolving hub; a place for cultural experimentation, exchange, and shared production. A place open to the city and a platform for understanding and responding to the contemporary challenges shaping our world today.
Museums are changing. ParCO is not a space where visitors are expected to tiptoe in silence; it is a place designed for dialogue, research, and discovery. Alongside controlled areas for study and focused work, ParCO offers spaces where the unexpected can unfold. To counterbalance the monumental scale of the Ospedale Vecchio, the building has been reimagined as a park, with pathways to explore, courtyards and orchards to pause in, and a design language that blurs the line between inside and out through unconventional spatial strategies,elements and material choices that evoke the outdoors. Constantly evolving like nature itself, ParCO will integrate into the urban fabric, forging new physical and cultural connections across the city. It aspires to become a model for cultural regeneration: a place where global conversations meet local traditions, where the monumental and the everyday intersect, and where Parma projects itself into the future as a city of art, education, and innovation.
