International design and innovation office CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati, in collaboration with the late Italo Rota, recipient of a posthumous Golden Lion at Venice’s 2025 Biennale Architettura, unveils the MAE Museum, a living museum dedicated to carbon fiber. Designed for MAE, the world’s leading manufacturer of equipment for carbon fiber production, the project reimagines the company’s extraordinary archive into a space for exploration and discovery. Situated in Fiorenzuola d’Arda, in the heart of Italy’s Motor Valley, the museum is now open to the public.
Over the past decades, carbon fiber has become ubiquitous: in jet engines, supercars, bicycles, aircraft, medical devices and many others products. Yet few people know how it is made. The MAE Museum invites visitors to cross that threshold of knowledge and uncover how an everyday polymer – acrylic fiber, similar to that used in clothing – has given rise to one of the defining materials of our age.
The visit begins in MAE’s archive, home to some of the world’s most valuable intellectual property related to the production of acrylic fiber. This fiber is the precursor for carbon fiber: when carefully heated and oxidized, its carbon atoms align into an ultra-strong lattice, giving the material its remarkable strength-to-weight ratio. In the museum, the archive made of a landscape of boxes forms an interactive 3D matrix enhanced by digital overlays, allowing visitors and researchers to explore MAE’s unique repository of industrial innovation and intellectual property. The archive becomes a living museum – a place to read, inquire, and connect ideas.
The journey continues through the Carbonization Tunnel, where heat and light retrace the transformation of acrylic fiber into carbon fiber. Here, architecture becomes a medium for these forces — pressure, compression, and release — translating the carbonization process into a multisensory experience. Real-time data from MAE’s test facility connects the museum to ongoing research, turning it into a living laboratory. Furthermore, an immersive space unveils the outermost frontiers of carbon fiber’s potential, where a complete mock-up of a production plant comes alive beneath augmented realities projected from above.
The final gallery presents interactive artifacts and prototypes that showcase current and future cutting-edge applications of carbon fiber, from next-generation vehicles to wind turbines and aerospace components.
The museum’s internal structures, fixtures, and furniture are also based on innovative digital fabrication through Maestro Technologies, whose evolving mission is to redefine how we build. The company is developing new software that bridges design and construction, positioning the museum as both a showcase and a testing ground for this new approach.
The immersive multimedia environment, conceived and developed by Studio Michbold, combines video, sound, and spatial lighting to guide visitors through the museum’s narrative of industrial evolution and material transformation. Voices range from narrators retracing the oil fields of Emilia-Romagna to pioneering engineers such as Marco Rovellini, who describe the carbonization process. Through its custom projection system, scenography, and narrative choreography, scientific processes are transformed into a dynamic audiovisual experience.
“Archives often rest in silence, yet they contain a quiet power,” says Carlo Ratti, professor at MIT and Politecnico di Milano, founding partner at CRA, and Director of Venice’s Biennale Architettura 2025. “We loved the idea of transforming a secret archive into a living museum, a place where past knowledge can be explored and ignite new paths of future innovation.”
“MAE Museum stems from the strong will to enhance MAE S.p.A.’s archive, as well as our heritage of ideas and productions, which have accompanied the transformations of society. Through this project, we aim at raising awareness regarding the crucial role of Italy’s industrial players in supporting the country’s growth, not solely from an economic perspective, but also from the cultural and social standpoints,” explains Paola Rovellini, CFO of MAE SpA and Director of the MAE Museum. “The opening of the museum, coming after years of passionate work, is both a milestone and a starting point. Our goal, now, is to increasingly integrate with communities, institutions, and universities to explore how the constantly evolving technological progress is itself culture… and a gateway to the future.
The MAE Museum continues a series of museum and cultural spaces designed through collaborations between CRA and Italo Rota. Previous joint projects include the MEET Digital Culture Center in Milan, the largest cultural center under construction in Southern Europe, AGO Modena, and the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, which Carlo Ratti curated.
CREDITS
Architectural Design: CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati and Italo Rota
CRA team: Carlo Ratti, Andrea Cassi (partner-in-charge), Chiara Morandini (Project Manager), Iratxe De Dios, Francesco Rabuffetti, Ina Sefgjini, Anna Spaggiari, Gary Di Silvio (graphics team), Pasquale Milieri (graphics team)
Construction and Technical Fit-out: Maestro Technologies (Mykola Murashko, Sara Zampieron, Kohei Nakajima, Julio Ramirez, Corrado Castiglioni), Bragoli Costruzioni
Museum Curation: Italo Rota, michbold, Macro
Structures: Ingembp
MEP Systems: Projema
Acoustics: Onleco
Graphic Design, Visual Identity, and Multimedia Installations: michbold + Macro
Multimedia Production and Interactive Installations: Zebra
Lighting Design: Light Follows Behaviour
Sound Design: Lorenzo Montanà, Medora
“Aufschwung” Installation Design: Flavio Manzoni
Images by Giuseppe Miotto / Marco Cappelletti Studio