Sophisticated Goppion technologies used in Turin’s renovated Egyptian Museum

Turin’s new Egyptian Museum will be inaugurated on April 1. The spaces have been completely renovated in an effort to transform one of the oldest and most prestigious Italian museums into “a post-modern museum of international standing.”

Massive renovations, which began in 2011 at a cost of about 50 million euros, have led to the doubling of the exhibition space (from 6,500 square meters to 12,000 square meters) and allow for the display of 8,000 relics from what is the second collection in the world (after the collection in Cairo) of Egyptian archeology.

The architectural plans aimed to make the most of the existing structure. According to architects Aimaro Isola and Stefano Peyretti, the building itself has an important story to tell beyond the story told by what is on display.

The principle behind the museum’s layout has to do with connections – connections among the relics, between the relics and the museum and the excavations and the museum’s rooms. The new layout not only reconstructs cultural, living and funereal elements down to the smallest details, it also tells the history of the archeological expeditions as well as the story of the museum and its collections in the same detailed way.

After having won an international tender, Goppion took on the challenge of displaying and protecting precious relics - from the tomb of Kha to the mummies of the “three sisters” - with the most sophisticated technologies, leading to the engineering and realization of the museum’s entire exhibit design. This included more than 150 structures, including display cases, supports and stands, which were built and installed in record time to allow the museum to be open early in time for the World’s Fair.

The display cases, some of which are incredibly large in size, come in a wide range of types – island, wall and leaning models – that correspond to a wide, functional range of opening systems that are the result of the most recent original technological research carried out by the Laboratorio Museotecnico Goppion in collaboration with national and international research institutes and museums. Faced with many challenges in working on the renovation of the museum, not least of which were the very brief amount of time given to realize the pieces and the limitations of the building, Goppion was able to further perfect and innovate on what it has already done in working with the most important museums in the world.

The exhibit design called for complete integration between the highly characteristic architecture and the exhibition spaces. Thus the display cases had to be absolutely transparent, almost as if to disappear from view, to allow to objects to be seen along with the impressive 17th Century building that houses them.

Large glass bells characterized by minimalist design and absolutely pure lines serve as large transparent frames, with the mechanical components, which are not visible from outside, confined to the edges and in the thickness of the glass plates so as to not block the works or the architecture and not distract the visitor in any way.

The use of especially large glass plates (up to 4.6 meters by 4 meters) means there are no vertical joints between the plates that could interfere with the way the visitor sees the works on display.

A wonderful combination of transparency and robustness, the display cases in this museum in Turin have a series of targeted features to guarantee the safety of the works and visitors. The large “ceilings” are limited in thickness (to stay within weight limits for the historic building’s floor slabs), and fit right into the vertical walls thanks to an exclusive way of working the edges (patented) that is invisible from the outside. This prevents collapse even in the event the adhesives fail.

Finally, as for the opening door, there’s a metal tensioning device (also patented) on the edge of the horizontal plate that prevents it from being bent and guarantees it doesn’t break down over time.

The precious and delicate nature of the historical pieces on display required great levels of preventative conservation, which Goppion was able to ensure thanks to its experience in working alongside the main conservation institutes throughout the world.

The way the display cases are built, the way the display area is sealed off from the technical compartments, and the perfection of the seals guarantee the highest level of airtightness of these cases, which were tested by the Politecnico di Torino. For pieces that are particularly fragile, air exchange may take place after as long as 20 days.

The project in numbers:

103 display cases and 70 visitable cabinets

150.000 kilos of steel

4000 square meters of glass