Collezione Maramotti

The fashion industry built this building, and then got out of its way. The Collezione Maramotti is the former Max Mara factory of Reggio Emilia, converted between 2003 and 2007 into a museum for the company founder's contemporary art, where machines once cut cloth and Parmiggiani, Kounellis and Salle now hold the floor.

Why it matters

The Collezione Maramotti preserves several hundred artworks dating from 1945 onward, with more than two hundred in its permanent collection. A fashion house turned production into patronage here, and the building — designed from 1957 for the young Max Mara company — retains its industrial character: exposed concrete pillars, floor stains where machinery stood and original window handles.

What to notice

The permanent collection is arranged across two floors, with European art—especially Italian and German work of the 1960s to 1980s—on the first and American art from the 1980s onward on the second. The ground floor is used for temporary exhibitions. Artists represented include Enzo Cucchi, Jannis Kounellis, David Salle, Claudio Parmiggiani, Enoc Perez, Emma Talbot, Helen Cammock and Evgeny Antufiev. The conversion retains machinery stains on the floor and factory-era window fittings. Outside, Lucy Jenkins's landscape design lets pioneer vegetation recolonise the post-industrial site.

Context and history

Max Mara, founded in 1951, commissioned architects Antonio Pastorini and Eugenio Salvarani in 1957 to design its first plant, an open-space factory expanded twice during the 1960s. Achille Maramotti (1927–2005), the company's founder, assembled the art collection privately. When the headquarters relocated in 2003, architect Andrew Hapgood converted the building between 2003 and 2007, preserving its industrial fabric while reorienting the entrance and cutting a central vertical axis.