The LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura was a great challenge, the largest architectural and urban planning project ever carried out in and by the city of Lugano, an important work not only for its size, but also for the concept it concretised: a desire for renewal and continuity, territorial and urban, historical and cultural. The project includes the huge new building and the square, but also the redevelopment of the former Grand Hotel Palace, one of the most beautiful historical buildings on the lakeside, and the adjacent 16th century convent complex, connected to the church which houses some of Switzerland's most important pictorial masterpieces. A choice motivated by the intention of creating a complete system, a new urban layout propeller of change, capable of dialoguing with the other parts of the city. In this sense the site itself is significant: on one side is the historic city, on the other the new quarters; in front is the lake, behind it the hill. Nature and city meet at their central point.

All this has been seamlessly translated and included in the splendid architectural invention that is the LAC. Over 180,000 cubic metres, rising over 29,000 square metres, designed to be a new viewpoint on reality, without obstacles or closures.

Architecturally speaking, two orthogonal wings make up the structure: the one perpendicular to the lake, containing the museum, is suspended on pillars, really like a raised wing that lets the air and the view flow towards the open space of the lake; the other, housing the concert and theatre hall, runs parallel to the shore towards the centre. When they intersect, they merge into the hall, a grandiose space pervaded by light that bursts through the full height of the building from the glass walls, facing the amphitheatre and the park on one side, and the vast Piazza Luini - Lugano's largest - on the other, which leads to the lake and constitutes the external soul of this immense public space, created to be, and become, the city's meeting point.