Porta Dulce | Bologna, Italy | Unit 21 | 2026

Bologna is the home of modern gelato yet has no dedicated space honouring this cultural legacy. Porta Dolce proposes a gelato museum at Porta Saragozza, Bologna’s medieval city gate, positioning itself as both civic offering and cultural archive. The site is treated as an active partner: a point-cloud survey of the existing structure informs the design directly, with a void sliced through the plan marking the position of a demolished medieval wall. The programme ascends from an ice well and production archive through history rooms — an ice cave, a Renaissance banquet hall, a street vendor archive — to an ingredient library and workshop, culminating in indoor and outdoor cafés that draw public life into the building. Form derives from ice cream’s microscopic structure. Floor and roof slabs are generated through a Grasshopper script modelled on ice cream’s crystalline geometry at microscopic scale, embedding gelato’s identity into the building’s fabric. A chemistry-driven facade wraps one half of the building, translating the six gelato flavours into colour and light ; an architectural expression of gelato’s chemistry and an invitation from the street into Bologna’s gateway.

Plans & Sections

Slab Development The floor and roof slabs are generated through a Grasshopper script modelled on the crystalline structure of ice cream at a microscopic scale, embedding the material identity of gelato directly into the building’s fabric.

Fog Chemistry Installation P1 translated five fog types’ molecular composition into a bonded installation; making invisible chemistry spatial. Chemistry as a generative tool is carried into Porta Dolce, where gelato’s molecular structure drives the facade and slab forms.

The Chemistry Facade The facade translates six gelato flavours into coloured molecular units — steel pipe bonds, sphere nodes, and coloured panels — dissolving the boundary between street and interior as a legible expression of gelato’s chemistry.

Final Renders