The project concerns the construction of an inline building, in the municipality of Segrate, as part of the transformation TR Cascina Boffalora, subject to a PII called MILANO 4 YOU 2016. The building is defined in its morpho-typological nature as an inline organism, developed with nine inhabited levels above ground and a basement. With regard to its dimensions, the body of the building has a length of about fifty-four metres and a depth of seventeen metres, with the accommodations served by two stair-lift cores that can optimise the distribution inside the building. The ground is conceived as a continuum of the public space. The ground floor, which is accessible from a porticoed level, houses the building access services, collective services, and two neighborhood commercial units. The relationship with the ground is expressed through a basement housing technical rooms, cellars, connections, in addition to the storage – warehouse spaces of the two commercial units. The succession of the eight residential levels creates a variable structure, capable of responding to different commercial requirements. This objective is achieved through a design process establishing invariants and variations, creating changeable possibilities from a typological point of view.
The project, therefore, establishes six possible types of housing, which can be combined with each other, pursuing the idea of a resilient building, which can have a minimum of thirty-two units to a maximum of sixty-four apartments. The invariants of the stair/lift cores and the optimised structural grid, on a centre distance of 5.50 metres, are designed both from the point of view of an “on site” construction method and with the hypothesis of a prefabricated system. The plant engineering cores/shafts become the tetragon substrate around which the project can be articulated in changing and resilient conditions. The passage between the interior of the building and the exterior is mediated by a depth of about 2.20 metres, capable of hosting terraces, service rooms and empty spaces. It is precisely the technical service rooms that become the changing and variable elements that can take on the role of external technical-storage rooms in the desire to build a front that is porous in its relationship between solids and empty spaces, which is functional and pragmatic in the use of space not only on the inside but also outside. These more ephemeral elements are configured as open fixed apertures that can shield technological equipment or service compartments for the use of each individual home. The resolution of the relationship with the sky is entrusted with the task of establishing a new skyline and solving the needs of optimal orientation needed for maximising the production of electricity from renewable sources. A large inclined roof, with a variable profile, with a slope that can fully capture the solar radiation, becomes an identifying element, an ideal synthesis of spatial conditions, technological requirements, and structural configuration. The task of housing the photovoltaic panels for producing electricity that can satisfy the entire requirements of the building is entrusted to a large rooftop inclined to face south.
The project proposal reinterprets materials from the tradition of Milanese cultured professionalism of the twentieth century through the use of ceramic as an external cladding material and burnished metal for the balconies and terraces. Important architectural works of the Milanese twentieth century are the references in the reinterpretation of architectural culture, Gio Ponti, Luigi Caccia Dominioni, Mario Asnago and Claudio Vender, Giulio Minoletti, Vito and Gustavo Latis, the Soncini brothers are ideally the masters with whom to dialogue in a bridge between past and present, between identity and tradition.
Client: R.E.D srl
Volume: 12.000 m3
Surface: 4.000 m2
Project year: 2018-2019
Architectural project: FORM_A
Design team. Andrea Fradegrada, Sandra Maglio
Consultants: ZH srl , B&C associati
Images: Onirism