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A historic address for Roman shopping, which had closed its doors for many years, comes back to life becoming the second headquarters of the Accademia Costume & Moda, one of its historic and most important fashion schools in the capital and in the world. The former Magazzini allo Statuto, better known as MAS, a stone’s throw from the beautiful Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, were taken over by the Infrastructure Fund for Growth – ESG (IPC Fund) of Azimut Libera Impresa SGR, the Azimut Group’s Italian platform dedicated to investments in real economy, with a total investment of about 20 million euros.
The headquarters, which will be added to the historic one of the Academy, located in another historic building in via della Rondinella, will develop over six floors above ground and a basement for a total of 6,700 square meters, with important positive effects also on the entire Esquilino district and Piazza Vittorio itself, already the subject of an important redevelopment project. The works are already underway and the inauguration is scheduled for October 2024. The project is overseen by Studio Kami Architecture & Engineering and includes fully digitized classrooms, for 1,100 m2, another thousand m2 reserved for laboratories of Accessories, Costume, Alta Fashion, Photography and Styling, and in the new spaces dedicated to the library and textiles. Another 250 m2 of terraces and the rooftop could be used as recreational, sharing and learning spaces.
The building, however, will also somehow rediscover its past and its historic link with the city: the MASs had been opened as Magazzini Castelnuovo at the beginning of the twentieth century, under the beautiful Umbertine-style arcades of the redeveloped neighborhood after the Unification of Italy in a “Turin” style, and they were the address for ready-to-wear fashion in the city, a forerunner of the big stores of fast fashion brands. A prolonged crisis led to their permanent closure in 2017. And since then, the area has fallen prey to decay.
A project that will also greet the next 60 years of life of the Academy, founded in 1964 by Rosana Pistolese, Ottavio Spadaro, Dario Cecchi and Nello Ponente, which over time has gained important recognitions (such as the title of “Best Fashion Schools in the World 2019” assigned by the Business of Fashion magazine) and which in 2020 also opened an office in Milan.
“We are thrilled to have given birth to this new initiative, acquiring a historic structure in Rome that has fallen into disuse for a long time now to redevelop it and assign it to an internationally recognized training and teaching center of excellence – commented Andrea Cornetti, CEO and Infrastructures of Azimut Libera Impresa SGR -. An operation through which we will allow our investors to participate in a sector, that of the young economy and education, fundamental for the development of our country and in a project that will also include a series of socio-economic revitalization interventions of a well-known district of Rome”.