Seeing the light: Claudia Silvestrin's reticent, austere and luminous architecture is always apt for display. He has redeveloped a factory for a gallery that takes references from its predecessor.

Claudia Silvestrin has been responsible for a number of small galleries--in London, Florence and Santa Fe; of these, probably the best known is the pure volume of the White Cube in Hoxton, London. His now-familiar architecture, whereby buildings become elemental compositions of dense mass, undecorated planes and luminous emptiness, induce the tranquillity necessary for contemplating works of art. As an architect he is content to stand back, to provide a timeless frame within which life of whatever kind can take place.

The contemporary art centre, designed by Silvestrin for Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Via Modane, Turin, is his most ambitious gallery building so far. Specializing in works executed in the '80s and '90s, the foundation did not want a museum for a permanent collection, but a living centre in which young artists could experiment. Temporary exhibitions, lasting three or four months, take place in the main hall and long gallery; there are artists' workshops, video and teaching rooms, an auditorium for lectures and conferences seating ISO people, a cafe and a restaurant.

Silvestrin won the commission in an architectural competition to design the new building on a site previously occupied by a small factory. Its demise and replacement by an art centre did not at first prove popular with the local, largely working-class, community, and for a time construction was held up. Once built, the neighbourhood took to the centre with enthusiasm. Entrance to the galleries is free and the bookshop and cafe are additional attractions. To the south, the building looks onto municipal gardens and is lined with Silvestrin's monumental benches--now favourite meeting places for local people. Sadly, the practice's proposal to replace the gardens with a landscaped sculpture court was not adopted, and though popular, the gardens are not an inspiring setting for the building.

The shed structure of the building--a long rectangle, 9m high and stretched out for 130m--plainly refers to that of a typical northern Italian factory. Aesthetically, Silvestrin is much attached to the single attenuated form, liking the simplicity and exaggeration of internal volumes that it readily permits. (He has recently repeated it in design of a house in San Francisco). But here form is underpinned by practicality. A single level (with two floors inserted at both ends) makes circulation easy to arrange, as well as day-to-day management of gallery activities. As usual with Silvestrin's buildings, opulence is suggested by a careful mixture of grandeur (of scale and interior space) and restraint -- achieved paradoxically because the budget was tiny. Above all, this is a supremely gentle building; its constituent planes are gently reflective, washed and, in places, dissolved by the northern Italian light, and enriched here and there by the warmth of cedar. Externally, the building is clad in creamy grey Lecce stone, subdued against the sky. The slenderest of glass slots, cut into the long south face at regular intervals, break the monotony of the roof beam, compose a rhythm and allow thin shafts of light into the interior. To the north, the stone face is broken by blocks of broader incisions that, in the main exhibition hail, form a slotted clerestorey.

Where the centre confronts the road to the west, an immense stone screen shields the building from view, so that its extent is only revealed by degrees as you pass; the screen is also used as a hoarding for advertising exhibitions and events.

You enter the building from the gardens to the south. To the right, a double-height corridor-cum-gallery stretches the length of the building, apparently to infinity. Floor to ceiling openings cut into the dividing wall lead to the main exhibition hall, an immense volume illuminated by the clerestorey on the north which diffuses light over the edges of the suspended ceiling and over white-painted walls.

The same vocabulary--light used to accentuate spatial simplicity and dignity--has been extended west into the more domestically scaled parts of the building. Cedar furniture in the bookshop and at the entrance--the handsome monolithic reception desk--was designed by the practice; as was the cedar-framed auditorium seating. (Research had shown that existing seating would have been far too expensive.) Sparely designed and comfortable, Silverstrin's version--called Le Erbe--is being put into production by a Turin firm.

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Claudlo Silvestrin, London

Project team

Claudlo Silvestrin, James Hardwick, Joanna Eade, Massimo De conti, Simona Pieri, Pierluigi Veneziani

Structural engineer

SB Tietz & Partners, London

Auditorium seating

Astolfi & Mattiazzi, Turin

Photographs

James Morris/Axiom