Figure 10A
Figure 10B
Figure 11
Top Left-Right: Figure 10 - (A) Old Meets New And (B) Facade Detail From The New Parliament Building By Renzo Piano Building Workshop Bottom: Figure 11 - The Old covered food market in Valletta, which will be undergoing an intervention over the coming months
flatted dwellings) into residences, offices and catering establishments. Typically, for instance, one finds a large number of law firms that have relocated to Valletta, due to its proximity to the Law Courts, although other professionals (notably architects and accountants) have also moved to the Capital. This has brought with it a number of architectural challenges, not least the constraints with the potential interventions that may be carried out on these properties due to their scheduling and/or architectural merit. Valletta has recently won the bid to become
the European Capital of Culture in 2018 (V18). This has had significant implications for the establishment of new cultural infrastructure, which will mainly manifest itself in the reuse of current buildings. Key projects in this respect include the new National Museum of Fine Arts (MUZA), which will be developed within the Auberge d’Italie (currently housing the Ministry for Tourism), the reactivation of the covered food market located in the heart of the city (Figure 11) and the conversion of the Old Civil Abattoir (the Biccerija) into a design cluster particularly Jan-Mar 2015 • MY LIVEABLE CITY | 85