Nautical Micro Museum

Cult, history, literature: the myth of the boat has gone through peoples and millenniums. It has taken on numerous nuances and connotations to become one of the most meaningful and shared concepts of humankind.

Aboard a boat, when darkness fell, the god Ra used to defeat Apophis every day to ensure sunrise. Aboard a boat, Ulysses challenged the sirens. Aboard a boat, Jesus taught the crowds at the shore of lake Galilee. Aboard a boat, a handful of adventurers made landfall on the New World setting off the beginning of the Modern Era.

Cult, history, literature: the myth of the boat has gone through peoples and millenniums. It has taken on numerous nuances and connotations to become one of the most meaningful and shared concepts of humankind.

It is a concept imbued with passion and madness. Indeed, the ship stands for scientific irrationality, intellect devoted to the most instinctive desire: subduing the elements, challenging the unknown, abandoning what is favorable to disappear into the inhospitable nature with just a few meters of fabric, rope, and planking.

Most of coastal nations boast their own nautical tradition. However, among them, Italy can maybe claim a place of honor. After all, Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus were Italians. The maritime republics were Italians. Even Venice with its thousand-year-old coastal empire is Italian.

If the Italian boating is the pride of global seafaring, Baglietto is without any doubt the Italian shipyard par excellence.

If the Italian boating is the pride of global seafaring, Baglietto is without any doubt the Italian shipyard par excellence. With its nearly 170-year glorious history of heroism, science, craftmanship and innovation, this shipyard has been fitting out the most desirable and renowned ships in the world. Today, Baglietto aims at showing such history to a heterogeneous public through a “travelling micro-museum”. Like a ship, this moving architecture will land on various destinations to tell its story to ship owners, visitors, and enthusiasts.

How to honor the history of one of the most prominent shipyards in the world?

This is the challenge of Nautical Micro Museum. YAC’s and Baglietto’s competition aims to tell once again stories of uncontaminated islands, legendary ships, storms, and adventures in the never-ending and everlasting epic of the exploration means par excellence: the boat.

Yac thanks all the architects who will take up this challenge.