The aim of the sustainable residential complex, designed by Morfearch, is not only the production of new buildings able to satisfy living space requests, but the will to offer public services to the new settlement and open to the “outer” population. The project area, crossed north to south by divergent paths, generates trapezoidal spaces that become the generating principle of the different parts of the whole complex: every secondary parcel is indeed composed by different size tanks, 30 to 120cm high, open to different uses, materials, and patterns: green areas, water, paved spaces, vegetation and gardens, available for residents with a leisure, but also social, function. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The same generating principle, that extrudes quadrangular shapes from the ground within a controlled design, characterizes the three residential buildings, hosting housing areas for 19.500 m2 integrated by public services. The three divergent blocks have different heights with a central “impluvium” and their development is “broken” in different points where paths cross them penetrating the buildings. Public services and functions are indeed located on ground floor: semi-transparent polycarbonate boxes and “bubbles” host bikes parking lots, libraries, common laundries, ateliers, cafeterias and so on; their evanescent and colorful material allows light to penetrate the whole ground floor without a sharp space division, but in a uniform and continuous way.
Stairs connecting to upper floors are also contained in similar transparent rounded boxes; using them, it is possible to join the underground parking too, developed underneath the whole complex. At the building scale, the same geometric method is used to create the facades development, made by quadrangular extruded windows with different thickness and dimension.
The northern facade is composed by emerging squared boxes in colored metal sheets, sometimes used as loggias with glass wall at the back, sometimes as normal windows; on the southern facade windows are instead internal, simulating an horizontal movement of the material included between the two opposite elements. The whole surface is here broken and disposed on different vertical planes, framed by a metallic ribbon.
If the northern facade is so composed by extruded elements coming out from a textured concrete wall, the southern one contains corresponding holes inserted in a double skin wall, composed by a metal plate that permits a continuous movement of air, allowing a natural insulation of the whole facade.
Internal distribution of flats:
5% ONE ROOM FLATS – S.l.p. 35 m2 30% TWO-ROOMED FLATS – S.l.p. 55 m2 20% THREE-ROOMED FLATS – S.l.p. 70 m2 with one bathroom and opened kitchen 30% THREE-ROOMED FLATS – S.l.p. 85 m2 with two bathrooms and closed kitchen 15% FOUR-ROOMED FLATS – S.l.p. 100 m2 with two bathrooms and livable kitchen
