University Students’ Housing and Services / C+S Associati

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Text description provided by the architects. The students’ university housing in the former Fiat area at Novoli, Florence, was designed to adapt to the constraints of the brief - the perimeter of the lot, the alignment, the building height - and to use them as a spring¬board for original compositional and typological solutions that have produced a articulated, light-filled interior landscape inside severe walls. Despite the double-courtyard layout the building is far from inward-looking and imposes order on the wider context: the passageway that cuts crosswise through it is seen as a "city gate", a way through the block and a focus for communal activities, as well as access to the students' lodgings. The twin themes of "urban silence" and "constructed mass", borrowed from historical city's fabric but updated to reflect today's different formal and plastic awareness, are evident on the solid though not impenetrable exterior facades.