Architecture Portfolio - SASSONE ALESSIA

Portfolio

PERSONAL PROFILE

SASSONE ALESSIA

Address: Via Fiume 16 - Meda (MB)

Date of birth: 14 October 1998

Nationality: Italian

Telepone: 3398539093

E-mail: sassonealessia.archi@gmail.com

The opportunity to leave a lasting impact is a privilege, and architects are gifted with this in everything they design. This is why I decided to study architecture: as architect, you have the ability to change the course of someone’s life, purely with what you can imagine and translate in a project. From a young age, I knew that I would pursue a career in art and design. In fact after attendig the artistic high school, I decided to follow this road with the Bachelor Degree course “Progettazione dell’Architettita” at the Politecnico di Milano. I’m currently finishing the Master Degree course “Building Architecture”, after graduating in March 2021, and also one of the twenty students chosen to attend The Advanced School of Architecture (ASA), an ‘additional’ training course that runs parallel to the Master degree courses. with the mission to strengthen and develop the figure of the architect-designer, through design and research activities that put the student in direct contact with the professional reality and with the complexity of the processes taking place today in the various European and non-European realities. During my last years at University I discovered that Architecture is not just creativity and design, it is mainly solving problems and translating the solution found in practical and functional projects.

Architecture is the art of construction, with all the multiplicity of problems concerning it. I’m strongly convinced that architecture design must be expression of a knowledge that always relates form and content and because nowadays the architect’s role is central in the construction process, it’s required a multidisciplinary preparation that goes beyond his disciplinary field.

During the last period of my studies I also discovered a particular interest in public architecture and related community themes, with specific reference to the use of innovative solutions and the interaction with complex urban models. Several university workshops, the participation in my first international architecture competition and the external internships experiences gave me the opportunity to confirm, over time, my aptitude for teamwork and to consolidate the conviction that sharing ideas and skills makes the project successful. My primitive passion for all type of arts remains important during my free time that I constantly try to cultivate, participating in exhibitions, conferences and events, that often become a driver for travelling, the primary engine of inspiration.

I am convinced that we never stop learning during our life and I constantly reach new opportunities to enrich my knowledge and satisfy my professional and personal curiosity.

INDEX

SELECTED WORKS

COMPETITION PROJECT

AGORA’ - Women’s House

ACADEMIC PROJECT

NORDBO LIGHTHOUSE TOWER - Tall Building

MIRABILIA ROMAE - Exhibition

SYMPHONIUM - Auditorium

CREACTIVE HUB - Sport, Leisure and Culture

THE FLOATING HOUSE - Labs and House

ASA MASTERCALSS

OFF GRID COMMUNITIES - Eco digital construction for sustainable living

COMPETITION DESIGN

AGORA’ WOMEN’S HOUSE

Location: Senegal, Africa

Year: 2021

Organization: Kaira Looro

Jury: Kengo Kuma & Associates

Miralles Tagliabue EMBT

SBGA Blengini Ghirardelli

Parthner: Spinelli Eleonora

Prize: TOP 50

Kaira Looro Architecture Competition is a design contest open to students and young architects with aims to discover new talents and to adopt sustainable architecture models for humanitarian purpose to improve life conditions in developing countries, judged by an international jury made up of pregistous firms and institutions.

The challenge of the competition was to design a women’s house that aims to promote gender equality as a key factor in rural development sush as the one presente in Baghere, Senegal.

AGORA is our proposal for this theme, a space dedicated to hosting activities which focus on education, raising awareness, and developing the village in the name of gender equality, in fact the project idea is based on the recognizability of a new cultural space that allows women to identify themselves through architecture.

The project is divided into three longitudinal pavilions, pla-

ced over a podium, which give rise to a central patio, a space collected and reserved, but at the same time visible from the streets that surround the lot. This space represents the true heart of the architecture, an area dedicated to dialogue, with and important symbolic value that remind the central space in African villages with the sacred tree. The spaces inside the pavilios, dedicated to administration, dialogue, and collective activities are designed to be flexible. Transparency, another keyword of the project, is given by the use of the bricks for the walls, which have constant openings on the internal front, allowing a continuous dialogue between the three pavilions.

The climatic comfort is present thanks to the roof made of wooden beams and sheet metal and raised from the walls of the pavilions, in order to allow the recirculation of air. Great attention was paid to the choice of materials, which are all native or recycled.

AGORA’ - WOMEN’S HOUSE

COMPETITION DESIGN

The project was recognised as being of interest as it was judged and included among the TOP 50 proposal. For this reason it inlcuded in the dedicated competition book published in Sept. 2021.

REALIZZATO CON UN PRODOTTO AUTODESK VERSIONE PER STUDENTI

REALIZZATO CON UN PRODOTTO AUTODESK VERSIONE PER STUDENTI

COMPETITION DESIGN

Renders

ACADEMIC PROJECT

NORDBO LIGHTHOUSE TOWER

TALL BUILDING

Location: Malmö, Sweden

Year: 2023

Course: Architectural Design Studio for Complex Construction 2

Professors: Folli M.G, Pecora C., Dotelli G., Pagliano L. and Imperadori M.

Parthners: Carlini Nicolò and Maslova Maria

The skyscraper, more than any other building type in the history of architecture, has had the ability to stimulate the collective imagination, defining the image of the contemporary metropolis with its iconic power. However, after World War II, an “international” homologation dominated by the American model began to prevail in Europe, which saw the skyscraper as symbols of power, a “social condenser” and a “machine to make the earth yield”.

In contrast, the Nordbö Lighthouse tower project, located in Malmö, Sweden, seeks to be a European tower, capable of measuring itself against the local context, that is, symbolic, identity issues and urban specificities.

For this reason, the tower can be considered an architecture that belongs to the Nordic context. In particular, it refers to Nordic Classicism and presents all the relevant characteristics of nordic architecture: from the close relationship between nature and architecture, meaning by nature also the atmo-

sphere and light; to “tectonic expressiveness” and the rigor and essentiality of geometric form, to clear functionality. The chosen project area is Vastra Hamnen, a neighborhood in the northwest of the city overlooking the Gulf of Oresund. The area, once occupied by the industrial seaport, was regenerated during the 1900s in an attempt to create a sustainable neighborhood that nevertheless developed unevenly and without a unified plan. The tower, with its environmental system, thus aims to become a limit for the urban unlimited expansion toward the sea, thus preserving the coastal nature. The stereometric cylindrical form has a clear reference to the Nordic Classicism and is necessary to have a 360-degree view of the context with which it is related. Due to the complexity of the theme, the project was developed at different scales, taking into consideration all the subjects that a complex architecture needs nowadays: architectural composition, structure, technology, materials, systems and sustainability.

In Italy and Europe, the term “skyscraper” is often preferred to the more Italian term “tower.”

This propensity, however, is not so much related to dimensional factors as to formal characters that define its continuities and ruptures. A term that represents a way of thinking about modernity that always wants to confront tradition, urban history, context and its materials.

Architectural and structural section

LEVEL 23 (+128 m)

LEVEL 22 (+128 m) Observatory

LEVEL 20 (+108 m)

Conference Hall

LEVEL 17 (+88 m)

Labs

LEVEL 14 (+73 m)

Coworking

LEVEL 7 (+48 m)

Student Housing

LEVEL 3 (+18 m) Digital library

LEVEL 0 (+0.00 m) Hall

2023

5 ACADEMIC PROJECT

NORDBO LIGHTHOUSE TOWER - TALL BUILDING

Plans

Renders

NORDBO LIGHTHOUSE TOWER - TALL BUILDING

Technological, structural and materials details

ACADEMIC PROJECT

ACADEMIC PROJECT

MIRABILIA ROMAE EXHIBITION

Location: Basilica Palladiana, Vicenza, Italy

Year: 2023

Course: Progettazione di grandi mostre e musealizzazioni

Professors: Caliari P.F.

Parthners: Cittadini Laura, Melzi Silvia, Pogliana Gabriele and Restivo Angelica

The design of a major exhibition is one of the most important design and professional opportunities for an architect. In fact, it constitutes an exceptional media event that imposes itself as a privileged sphere of contemporary communication in society’s cultural renewal strategies.

“Miriabilia Romae - Viaggio tra le eccellenze” is an exhibition combining fashion and architecture, two great excellences of Italian culture, both considered unique and inimitable. In particular the exhibition takes its name from the Mirabilia Urbis Romae, ancient treatises originally written in Latin, which can be considered ‘the medieval guide of Rome’, as they served pilgrims on their way to Rome and guided them throughout the journey and the magnificences of the eternal city. Inspired therefore by the theme of jurney, the exhibition design was conceived to be a veritable city within the Basilica Palladiana in Vicenza, where the visitor gets lost in the streets, in a progressive itinerary of discovery of Roman architectural

excellences, side by side with the unique creations of clothes from the eponymous collection by Maison Valentino. The exhibition is therefore made up of blocks of different shapes and heights, which are sometimes hollowed out to form internal courtyards, hidden gardens and exhibition niches. The visit to the exhibition is therefore configured as a gradual cognitive journey where the visitor’s attentive eye is essential to grasp the particular and trace it back to the general. In order to have a total experience of the design of a large exhibition, the project covered the entire process of its realisation, which in reality involves several professionals, but in which the architect can have a central role of management and control: from the curatorship, the design of the layout both inside and outside the Basilica Palladiana, the design of the opening event with catering, through to branding, advertising of the exhibition and coordinated image.

MIRABILIA ROMAE - EXHIBITION

ACADEMIC PROJECT

“A garment is like a monument: it is a matter of structure, quality, spirit, colors, details and craftsmanship”

by Francesco Bonami

(Mirabilia Romae, 2015 in Maison Valentino).

The entire layout is to be understood as the emptying out of a solid, in fact, from the design of the main axes of the city or layout, the areas of the volumes have been defined, which, in turn, empty out on the inside to reproduce the courtyards of the buildings and lean against or away from each other to recreate the streets of the city. In addition, the different volumes are at different heights to reveal and sometimes hide a part of the city from the visitor.

MIRABILIA ROMAE - EXHIBITION

Exposure system - Section and details

MIRABILIA ROMAE - EXHIBITION

The importance of a large exhibition for the architect lies in some particularly interesting aspects: first, large temporary exhibitions, with their installations to be realized inside buildings or in urban spaces of the city, have always been one of the most fertile fields of formal experimentation for architectural design, as well as of rediscovery of places and contents

that have remained at the margins of use and knowledge; furthermore, a large exhibition, because of the design commitment and the broad involvement of professions that it implies, is configured as an “epochal event,” therefore a stable and lasting transformation of the urban fabric, of a historic building, of an archaeological area can also arise from it.

ACADEMIC PROJECT

Branding and Coordinated image

ACADEMIC PROJECT

SYMPHONIUM AUDITORIUM

Location: Milan, Italy

Year: 2022

Course: Sustainable Architecutre Construction Studio

Professors: Brunetti G., Boffi G. and Scaioni M.

Parthner: Styliou Maria Alexia

Symphonium is an intervention project located in “Alda Merini” school, in Via Gallarate Milan, with purpose the creation of a multipurpose auditorium that can be at the service of both students and the community, a new centrality and gathering place for all the district.

The design of this project in the Sustainable Architecture Construction Studio required the investigation of both compositional and techlonoligical aspects at different scales, giving the team an in-depth knowledge of how to make and above all build architecture.

The project area of the school offers an empty area on the north-east side of it, in a corner close to the city, which seemed to our team to be the ideal location for the new structure. In fact, the new building, with his pure and simple shape, is connected both the school because placed in continuity with the gym volume and both the city, because it’s able to complete the urban elevation facing the high buildings on the

other side of the street and it’s also related with the new tower projects that’s being built next to the project area. This extreme part of the area is the perfect place for the public entrance of the community, that thanks to an inclined plane and an underground plaza is able to reach the entrance of the auditorium, placed at the underground level with all the services needed.

The main hall with the stage for the performances is placed in this way on the ground floor, easily visible from all angles, in such a way as to involve the visitor from the outside too. This is a clear reference to the project, Dallas Theatre by OMA. The first floor offers the presence of a gallery with more seats in the hall and some rehearsal rooms in the cantilever part of the level, under which the students will pass to enter in the school.

As structural point of view the building is designed totally in steel, apart for the underground floor built in concrete.

ACADEMIC PROJECT

In the typical theater, the proliferation of front-of-house and back-of-house spaces threatens to strangle the auditorium itself, buffering the performance from the outside world. The compact orientation of the Symphonium, allows support spaces to be stacked above and beneath the auditorium rather than wrapped around it.

Renders

MUSIC HALL

No longer shielded by transitional and technical areas – foyer, ticket counters, backstage facilities – this reimagining of the theatre typology exposes the auditorium to the city on all sides. The Theatre can perform in a hermetic container, or –opening the blackout blinds along the exterior glass walls – with the city of Milan as a backdrop the next.

REHEARSAL ROOM

ACADEMIC PROJECT

CREACTIVE HUB SPORT LEISURE CULTURE

Location: Milan, Italy

Year: 2020

Course: Final Design Studio

Professors: Faroldi E. e Vettori M. P.

Parthner: Scaglia Morena

University infrastructures, through their spaces, represent one of the most effective social, functional and morphological adhesives of the many and complex relationships that are established in the urban organism, representing a dynamic system that is constantly evolving. As such, university infrastructure cannot be said to have a meaning which refers to an exclusive typology of buildings, but instead wholly to the role that these architectures have taken on in the evolutionary and structuring dynamics of the contemporary city.

In recent architectural history, in line with the developments of university complexes and campuses within urban centres, the main tangible features draw their energy from the desire to constitute parts of the city that are integrated and in continuity with the places they belong to, becoming significant points of reference.

The paradigm of Milan authoritatively highlights these dynamics: the universities have gradually become one of the main

figures within the strategies for the regeneration and innovation of the city, the central areas, the outskirts and the territorial sectors which have gone unaddressed for decades.

So that CreActive Hub is an “Architecture of the University”, it’s a hub of creativity designed to regenerate the territory of the so called “La Goccia”, a disused area near campus Bovisa of Politecnico di Milano, with an attractive function and spaces both for the students and the inhabitants.

In both indoor and outdoor spaces, creativity is at the center of the proposed experiences and is the main protagonist of the scene thanks to the visual and physical permeability with the sourroundigs characterized by the importance preexistance of the Gasometers. The design of the ground is modeled to configure a space on a human scale that develops in front of the architecture, the main stage of the project and to suggest movement and vitality through ramps and jups that offer different perspectives on the territory.

CREACTIVE HUB - SPORT LEISURE CULTURE

ACADEMIC PROJECT

The project born from the intersection of two perpendicular axes, an arrangement that affects not only the bodies of the building, but also extends to the public spaces, seen in continuity with the interior of the center and from which it derives its configuration.

CREACTIVE HUB - SPORT LEISURE CULTURE

ACADEMIC PROJECT

Section A - A’

CREACTIVE HUB - SPORT LEISURE CULTURE

CREACTIVE HUB - SPORT LEISURE CULTURE

ACADEMIC PROJECT

This project represents an important step in my accademic career, as it enabled me to learn about a subject that become the theme of my bachelor degree thesis and subject of one of the ASA’s Masterclass.

ACADEMIC PROJECT

THE FLOATING HOUSE LABS and HOUSE

Location: Costa Volpino, Italy

Year: 2019

Course: Costruction Studio

Professors: Oberti I.

Parthner: Leonardo Cuzzolin and Scaglia Morena

“For sixteen days—June 18 through July 3, 2016—Italy’s Lake Iseo was reimagined. 100,000 square meters of shimmering yellow fabric, carried by a modular floating dock system of 220,000 high-density polyethylene cubes, undulated with the movement of the waves as The Floating Piers rose just above the surface of the water.”

The installation designed by Christo was the premise for the project proposed by the laboratory, since the latter concerns the design of architecture on the water, in the same waters of Lake Iseo, in particular in a small natural harbor in the municipality of Costa Volpino, in Bergamo province.

The project involves the design of a small building organism (houseboat for vacations and leisure) consisting of a dedicated multifunctional space and what is necessary to accommodate nucleus of people on the shores of the lake.

The project in particular is located in the basin of Lido delle Rose, a basin with stagnant water, optimal to place an acco-

modation for researchers biologists, who will have the opportunity to study the wide variety of flora and fauna and try to find a solution to the persistent problem of pollution. The project host the house and another space, used as laboratory that, thanks to the physiognomy of the architecture, placed on a floating platform, allows a direct access to the water.

The house, built with X-LAM wooden system, is equipped with an access pier directly connected to the lake shore, a large open space for leisure and carefully designed shading and solar shading systems. Moreover an extremely characterizing element, both morphological and technological, is the pergola, which turns around the entire volume and serves as main element of screening in summer and in winter.

During the design process, great importance was given to the technological aspects of the construction of xlam architectures, resulting in a very detailed project.

An important theoretical reference that has been studied and proposed for reinterpretation is Aldo Rossi’s Teatro del Mondo.

“The project is characterised by two facts: it has a precise usable space, even if it is not specified and ut is evident that being on the water is its main characteristic, a raft, a boat: a floating machine”.

Double layer insulation EPS (150 mm)

Interlocking system for Rheinzink exterior finishing

External finish in metal slats Rheinzink (25 mm)

Paving formwork (65 mm)

Exterior wooden plank flooring (10 mm)

Hold-down profile of support structure

Floating floor supports Aerated crawl space with completion casting (h 205 mm)

Slope screed

Steel frame VISS TV Jansen (170x80 mm)

Concealed metal eaves with waterproof membrane

Wood-effect porcelain stoneware interior finish (10 mm)

Plasterboard sheet with vapour barrier (12,5 mm)

Wood fibre acoustic insulation panel (40 mm)

3-layer X-Lam load-bearing panel (120 mm)

Porcelain stoneware interior finish on double gypsum sheet (28 mm)

Radiant floor heating system (50 mm)

Screed for installations (100 mm)

Extruded XPS insulation (80 mm)

Technological Section

ASA MASTERCLASS

OFF GRID COMMUNITIES

ECO-DIGITAL CONSTRUCTION FOR SUSTAINABLE LIVING

Location: Chennai, India

Year: 2022

Course: First Masterclass ASA

Professors: Cascone P. and Laggada M.

Parthner: Jacome C.D.A, Kawamura S., Kim A., Muller S.J. and Hussain U.F.Z

Given the global consequences related to the climate change, the post-pandemic dynamics and the Ukrainian conflict an ecological approach is needed in order to respond to the growing request of affordable housing solutions for different social and environmental scenario. Such approach will have to face the dramatic rising cost of living, particularly in relation to energy, food and construction materials towards off-grid communities. Therefore, the master class had explore an innovative idea of a sustainable construction industry able to provide a catalogue of possible site-specific and off-grid housing configurations.

In particular tropical climate affects the belt between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, with temperatures that are always high with a constant high percentage of humidity present in both rainy and dry seasons, causing different environmental phenomena: from water

crises due to droughts to flooding due to heavy rainfall. The design strategy devised, particularly for the location in Chennai, India, aims to realize an eco-sustainable housing project, compatible not only with the particular environmental conditions of the area, but also with the difficult social realities of the slums, plagued by both the housing problem and the presence of dangerous diseases such as malaria. The initial approach was the study of vernacular housing types, which led to an understanding of the useful passive and active strategies to be adopted in the design and also to the local materials with a low environmental impact. The most detailed part of the design concerns the panel system, inspired by traditional Jaali screens, is imagined as breathable and adaptable skin wrapping itself around the skeleton of the living units, protecting in this way both from rain and direct sunlight, allowing for a shaded and ventilated space within.

The cluster design was an experiment on creating an off-grid community. The tropical climate has given its respective context a lifestyle that functions 30% inside and 70% outside the housing unit. While the basic needs and amenities are provided on the interior of the housing unit, the life of the tropical people is reflected on the outside. Elements like courtyards, terraces, streets and shops are the catalyst to bring life into this scenario.

1 - Primary Timber Framing 150mm x 50mm

2 - Secondar Timber Framing 50mm x 50mm @ 350mm spacing

3 - Manual Cam System

4 - Woodkin Bamboo Composite Panel 500mm x 500mm

The units of mixed typology surrounding a courtyard is a module that replicates vertically with spaces for incrementality at its bottom, in order to showcase that a simple housing unit is flexible to adapt to the high density demand needed for the tropical settlements. The parametric design in this sense was really usefull to create different possibilities.