C10 | Ferrari Museum

A route through the collection, shaped like the cars.

This concept design for a proposed Ferrari museum in Beirut, Lebanon, treats the collection as a route rather than a set of rooms. Visitors move along curving galleries where each car stands on its own round plinth. The walls take their language from the cars, curving like bodywork in grey metal panels cut through by sweeping bands of red lacquer.

The galleries lead to a tall central hall, open to the sky through a roof of concrete beams and glazing. Here the palette turns white, and daylight falls across pale walls and a glossy floor. A screen of steel bars wraps the hall, filtering views without closing them. Ramps rise past the screen to the upper galleries, so the cars are seen from changing heights, and a seating area behind the screen offers a place to pause and look back onto the collection.

A museum for one marque has to show the cars and say something about them, and this Ferrari museum in Beirut uses the building to do both. Treating the galleries as a single route lets visitors meet the collection one car at a time rather than all at once. Shaping the walls like bodywork ties the architecture to what it displays. The bright central hall then gives a pause, white surfaces and daylight after the red and grey galleries, and a place to sit and look back at the cars. As a concept design, it sets out the idea, the route and the materials. It is a concept by IAIA, working in interior architecture.