Italian studio Carlo Ratti Associati and architect Italo Rota have designed a museum dedicated to carbon fibre, which will be partially made from the material.
Created for carbon-fibre manufacturers MAE, the museum will feature objects from the company's 53-year history that show how the ultra-strong, lightweight material is used across the automotive, cycling and fashion industries, among others.
According to Carlo Ratti Associati (CRA), the MAE Museum will be the world's largest archive of acrylic fibre technologies.
The MAE Museum will include an archive fitted with robotic arms that fetch documents
It will be situated in a renovated warehouse in Piacenza, Italy, next door to a new MAE pilot plant, and will have an interior largely made of carbon fibre, including some sections made with recycled fibre. The carbon-fibre elements will include an entrance door that "opens like a curtain", while another feature of the museum will be its heavy use of robots in the exhibition experience.
Its first room will be a robotic archive warehouse, where mechanical arms move along the walls to extract historical photos and documents and place them on a raised viewing platform for the viewer's perusal.
Elements will be made of carbon fibre, including the curtain-like door
Elsewhere in the museum, visitors will be able to observe the process through which acrylic fibre is transformed into carbon fibre and see objects demonstrating its contemporary use.
In a black room filled wit...