Greg Lynn Mimics the Mountains for Moto Guzzi's New Museum

Moto Guzzi has opened its rebuilt home on the Lecco shore of Lake Como, with design from American architect Greg Lynn.

In a process that has taken almost five years, Lynn has devised a project that encompasses both a working factory and a 3,000-square-metre museum.

The museum is arranged as a run of tapering, cone-like volumes that step down in height as they meet the piazza, each wrapped in vertical seams of grey metal. The forms read as a small mountain range set against the real one behind.

Where the building turns towards the shop, the cladding switches to deep "Guzzi red". Windows are cut as circles and stadium-shaped ovals, borrowed from headlamps and instrument dials, and one is set into the curve like a porthole.

Inside, the galleries are almost entirely white, with curved balustrades, oval apertures cut through the upper floors and a circular rooflight ringed with bulbs. More than 160 restored machines are displayed on low plinths, from the G.P. prototype that started the company to the racers behind its 14 world titles, with a timber hull suspended overhead. The reception counter is a deep green arc, while seating is a black leather ring.

At the Moto Guzzi Caffè, pale terrazzo is used across the floor, and is paired with a mint-green coffered ceiling grid, opal glass globes on brass rings and a salon hang of archive posters and racing photographs. Aluminium tube benches by Urbantime sit outside.

Behind it all is the industrial half of the project: 5,500 square metres of new buildings taking the factory to 38,000 square metres, capacity above 30,000 bikes a year, 1,300 square metres of photovoltaic panels and a robotised conveyor linking engine and final assembly. Visitors get a window onto the lines, plus a raised terrace over a piazza laid with a mosaic eagle.

The site opens to the public for Moto Guzzi World Days, running September 3 to 6.

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