Lugano City Tour + Lake Museum

CITY TOUR + LAC
Visit to the center of Lugano with its characteristic streets, the cloister and the
new cultural center of the City of Lugano, LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura was created with the aim of enhancing the cultural and artistic offerings of the city and the region. Equipped with a concert and theater hall and a museum, it is the first in the region conceived as such and not obtained from other spaces.
The building
With a volume of 180,000 m3, the imposing building stands on the site of the former Palace hotel. The strong point of the LAC architecture is its proximity to the lake. The hall (650 m2), which provides access to the museum and the theater and concert hall, is a large window that makes the boundary between inside and outside barely perceptible.
The Museum
The Museo d’Arte della Svizzera italiana was born from the union between the Museo Cantonale d’Arte and the Museo d’Arte della Città di Lugano. 5 floors, 2500 m2 designed to leave the works the protagonists, to induce silence and contemplation. One floor dedicated to the permanent collection, the remaining 1820 m2 dedicated to temporary exhibitions. With approximately 600 m2, a single floor of the Museum at the LAC has the same exhibition surface as the entire Villa Malpensata.
The theater and concert hall
800 m2, 1000 seats, a modular acoustic shell, a retractable orchestra pit: here is a concert hall that can become a theater and host any type of show, from symphonic concerts to jazz concerts, from opera to operetta, from dance to prose theater. Thanks to the collaboration between the architect Ivano Gianola and the Müller BBM of Munich (a leading company in the field of engineering), the theater and concert hall of the LAC perfectly combines architectural aesthetics and acoustic quality. From September 2015, the LAC’s musical programme will be ensured by Lugano Festival and the theatre programme by LuganoInScena.