Gian Maria Socci Portfolio

GIAN MARIA SOCCI PORTFOLIO OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN DESIGN WORKS

SAN PATRIGNANO HOUSING. New communal housing for the the San Patrignano drug rehab community.

Rimini (IT) 2015/2016. Under construction.

Area: ca 2500 m2 Client: San Patrignano Social Cooperative.

Project Leader at Urban Think-Tank

The Community of San Patrignano is the largest facility for therapeutic treatment and social reintegration of drug addicts in Europe. It has been recognized as a leading model and several academic institutions are conducting research on its operational modes.

From the survey and from the requests brought forward by the community, the necessity to provide San Patrignano with new, functional and innovative facilities emerged. The fast pace at which the Community has grown has enforced a continuous state of emergency on the built environment.

Challenging needs had to be met quickly, resulting in the construction of several temporary buildings that lack aesthetic coherence and are sometimes inadequate to their function. In particular, the need to host an increasing number of guests in the best possible environment has brought San Patrignano to ask U-tt to develop spatial proposals for a new typology of dormitory.

The building sits on the footprint of an existing stable, adopting the same U-shape that shelters a central courtyard.

Social spaces are arranged around it in a carefully layered gradient of increasing privacy. A green buffer mediates between the public space of the plaza and a sheltered portico from wich the units are accessed. The entrance door leads to a decompression space facing the gallery that works as gathering and changing room.

The inner articulation of the units has been developed through an iterative process of testing and feedback with the community members. The results is a double unit that organises 12 beds in 2 mirrored wings sharing the entrance area and the bathrooms. This layout is meant to provide the perfect balance between space efficiency and control over group dynamics, a concern of uttermost importance given the unstable conditions of the residents.

The design process provided the opportunity for research and innovative insight into the close connection between spatial environment and social integration in sensible groups, rising the ambition to underline guidelines for the architecture of this particular type of care facilities.

The construction will be executed with prefab elements of wooden platform frame, assuring a quick implementation that maximises the advantages of the seriality inherent the architectural concept. The overdimensioned portico unifies the 3 separate volumes of the building, providing shelter from the elements on the entrance area and doubling as greenhouse on the roof terrace. This architectural element in coherence with the landscaping of the courtyard, also constitutes a primary feature of environmental control, managing solar gain or shading in the different seasons, and organising rainwater harvest for secondary uses.

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Detailed plan of standard unit ground floor

Detailed plan of standard unit first floor

White plaster (water based paint)

Aluminum coping (painted black)

Ceramic tiles

Wood handrail Wood steps Ceramic tiles

White plaster (water based paint)

Aluminum coping (painted black)

Ceramic tiles

Ceramic tiles

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Ground floor plan

Cross section water harvest strategy

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water 30 cm pre-cast concrete wall water 10 cm (phitodepuration area) gravel layer (10cm) sand filtering strata (80cm) air circulation piping main drainage pipe gravel layer (10cm) filtering aquatic plants roof catchment area roof terrace filtration surface

Water harvest strategy plan and detail of the central pond

PARK OF FRIENDSHIP Client: Rotary Club of Montenegro Bar (MNE) 2014

Regarding the evocation and revaluation of the green areas in the city center, the Antivari or Old town of Bar has a great influence. Here natural green invasion of climbers, low vegetation, olive trees along with stone construction creates an image of reciprocal respect between nature and man.

This phenomena will be revived in new park of the city of Bar. The future park will be also an important knot of cultural manifestations (summer scene, workshops, children recreation) and participation.

The theme “friendship� has been declined into five programmatic points.

Friendship between nature and construction- architecture and nature formally collaborate whereas they differ for materiality which makes their own identity to arise. This way the two forms coexists and respect each other.

Friendship between modernity and tradition- Inspired

by the fortification of old Bar, using the traditional stone construction , we want through a new vision of architecture to revive tradition.

Friendship between technology and manufacturingWe want craftsmanship to regain the great cultural value it used to have in the past. New global technologies in collaboration with local manufacture, can raise the value of the place and create a strong identity.

Friendship between light and shadows- Plays of light and shadows are always presented in the park. It creates a dynamic atmosphere where activities adapt to temperature and light.

Friendship between play and relax- The park should be the collective place where people meet, chat, share ideas and opinions. But the park is also the place to be alone with nature, enjoy your privacy and express individualism.

East Waterfront

West Waterfront

THOROUGHLY GABICCE. New waterfront and general urban strategy for a small touristic city Gabicce Mare (IT) 2013. Competition Finalist.

Area: ca 60 ha. Status: Ongoing final competition stage. Client: Gabicce Mare municipality.

In collaboration with: Marchingegno, ComeOnArchitects.

Gabicce Mare is a small coastal city on the Adriatic sea that relies completely on the tourists influx during the summer season. During the roaring years of great touristic development, specially in the ‘70s, the settlement has grown unplanned and chaotic according to the individual longing of the local owners, who, out of the blue, found themselves Hotel managers. This resulted in an extremely dense fabric and in an objective difficulty to feel the sea from within the city.

On the other hand the locality is placed in an exceptional spot along the Adriatic coast, as the San Bartolo hill, a natural reservoir, breaks the monotonous, flat, sandy landscape of the well known beaches of the Emilia Romagna region.

Given the beautiful natural setting and the numerous touristic facilities, the proposal focused on restoring the lost balance between nature and urbanity in order to achieve a

coherent ecosystem that, while preserving the existing assets, will successfully compete with the glittering, all aperitif and disco, neighbouring cities.

The urban strategy focuses on a suturing approach. Five trasversal squares are identified and enhanced in the existing fabric: trough small demolitions, surface treatements and levels adjustemnt these places creates iconic voids amid the too dense buildings and reconnect the rear city to the sea, both visually and physically.

The squares are perpendicularly tied by the new waterfront.

This promenade extends the mediterranean landscape of San Bortolo right trough the city, and gently creates an hybrid space of transition between the tall hotels and the soft beach.

The swimming facilities as well as bars and restaurant become integral part of the system as they facilitate the access to the beach and merge into the natural environment.

OBSTACLE fragments of natural and urban public space are parallel to the sea but have no relation with it.

MOVEMENT The new viability diverts the traffic out of the central area.

A new roundabout evenly distributes fluxus and serves the new underground parking.

CROSSING Proposed public spaces open up direct accesses to the beach with visual corridors. The squares are joints between the fragments.

UNITY In between the crossing, new parallel landscaped promenades arise. The new waterfront ties the punctual interventions in a territorial unity.

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West Waterfront

1.Dock square 2.Palm square 3.Mississipi square 4.Town Hall square 5.Piazza Giardini d’Italia 6.Extreme Sport square

East Waterfront

West Waterfront

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DOCK SQUARE The existing dock, deprived of its funcional role, doesn’t integrate in the experience of the city despite the sublime views it offers. The proposal make it inhabitable with minimum interventions that add the necessary comfort without negating its rough character.

PALMS SQUARE Taking advantage of the only enlargement along the old waterfront, a urban living room is placed here in order to let people relax and enjoy the breeze.

The square, defined by a palm forest arranged in regular grid, acts as a pause along the night and day promenade.

MISSISSIPI SQUARE Aiming to reconquest the seaside, this square starts from a quiet shaded place to reach, trough a long catwalk, the abandoned “Mississipi� building on the water. The latter is renewed to host a beach club able to attract people even in the winter months.

TOWNHOUSE SQUARE Laying at the core of the settlement, this plaza connects the three promenades with the main access to the city. Its institutional role is underlined by the enlargement, suitable for shows and gatherings, and by the direct view of the beach trough a great staircase.

GIARDINI D’ITALIA SQUARE The square is a pivotal joint in the proposal, as it manages to climb with a gentle plane the great hight difference between the higher city areas and the beach.

A hidden elevator grants access for all.

EXTREME SPORTS SQUARE As counterpoint to the more urbanized plazas, this place stands as the outpost to the discovery of San Bartolo natural reservoir. Here the aquatic sports find their facilities and old styled caravels bring the tourists to inaccessible beaches at the foot of the hill.

East Waterfront

West Waterfront

MINIMUM LIVING IN THE ALPS. Prefab, expandable, self-sufficient bivouac for the Italian Alpine Club.

Trentino Alto-Adige (IT) 2012. Competition.

Area: 18 m2 Client: Italian Alpine Club. in collaboration with Eliodoro Bigi, Marco Jacomella, Roberta Pari.

A renewed interest in mountains and wilderness in general calls for a urgent update of the network of huts and shelters provided by the mountaineering club in the Italian Alps.

The proposal draws a building system for alpine bivouaks inspired in equal terms by futuristic technology for extreme climates and by traditional techniques. Furthermore, the project looks beyond the basic shelter as a miniature social experiment, a place where a common passion is usually shared with strangers amidst great physical challenges.

Despite the minimal volume (44 m3) the building is thus distributed in separate modules specifically designed to maximise the use of space and comfort during the short stay, allowing for the creation of proper social occasions.

The modules can be assembled seamlessly to form expandable compositions of different sizes. This strategy grants maximum flexibility, allowing the same system to be adapted throughout the alpine range according to location and needs. The highly prefabricated construction maximises the precision of realisation as well as cost and time effiency. The modules are built down the valley, moved to location by

helicopter and quickly joined on-site by a small team with limited tools.

The central module acts as core of the composition, providing distribution between the modules and concentrating the structural and technological features. Three metal legs extend from the base of the core to fix the bivouak on the granite rock with minimal impact on the site, while the rest of the structure cantilivers from the centre.

On top of the core the infrastructural systems find their perfect location. Simple and proven photovoltaics and water filtering, a composting toilet with burner, provide off-grid self-sufficiency for the limited needs of the mountaineers.

The materials are chosen to achieve the best balance between embodied energy, eenrgy consumption, costs and weight.

X-Lam panels create a coherent structural box providing also a certain thermal mass necessary during sunny days, while an ultra-thin reflective mat adds extra insulation of space-shuttle performance. The seals between the modules are dealt with isolating joints to ensure the continuity of the thermal envelope.

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Base Unit (6 beds)

Extended Unit (12 beds)

Further compositions (18+ beds)

Sleeping module 14.18 m3

Core module 6.55 m3

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Entry module 10.70 m3

Living module 13.32 m3

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Elevation, entrance

Assembly scheme

Elevation, living

Elevation, beds

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Section, living

Section, beds

Reflective thin insulation

X-Lam box structure

The external continuos skin in metal shingles protects the wooden structure against the harsch weather greatly enhancing the building’s lifespan.

High efficiency, thermo reflective insulation wraps the volume with transcurable weight and thickness (2cm). The mat is installed on small wooden posts between 2 mirrored air chambers.

Engineered wood is the material of choice for the main chassis, as it provides a perfect balance of structural and thermal performance with an extreme construction precision, allowing for seamless assembly and trouble-free transport.

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Detailed section

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Aluminum-copper alloy

DAS ANDERE Alternative Urban Narratives Aalborg (DK), Europan 12 Competition “Adaptable City�, 1st prize client: Aalborg municipality

Adaptable City is, after all, a tautology, as cities themselves are the place of transformation and adaptation par excellence.

The modes in which this adaptation occurs are indeed very diverse.There was a time when it was believed that Planning could actually reshape the destiny of a city: the right functions at the right place, all baked in a coherent form to fulfil the highest degree of efficiency.

This is not the case anymore.

The multiplicity of stakeholders involved in the making of the city nowadays, with their own contrasting, unpredictable interests, makes unsustainable any uniform, top-down action, and rather asks for a process of Negotiation.

On the other hand, the empowerment and participation of citizens in decision making, opens the way to a new,

Exceptional Vestbyen

exciting application of direct democracy: it seems urgent to take advantage of this great opportunity as citizens are, ultimately, the ones who really make the city.

Thus, instead of answers, cities shall be provided of questions. Questions in built form.

Punctual, uncanny interventions are laid down as Baits, following empiric occasions, to foster interest around certain spots in the city.As incubators, they reveal hidden potentials and disclose the widest spectre of possibilities.

A dialectic process of negotiation is then started between municipality, stakeholders and citizens: it is based upon Negotiative Plans in form of exemplary architectural proposals. These, starting from the given Baits, will evolute trough iterative adaptation to changing needs, they will inspire people’s imagination, give birth to unpredictable uses and, lately, influence the physical transformation of Vestbyen wider area.

Quotidian Vestbyen

Snapshot 2018: Baits

Snapshot 2025: Negotiative plans

are needed.

Although the quotidian array of facilities makes life possible and supports the development of a healthy community, only Places of Exception can produce collective memories.

The proposed Baits insist on existing fragments popping out of the urban fabric. They work as incubators, treating the borders and introducing new iconic values to awake latent potentials.

The interventions are overlaid, adding instead of replacing, so to preserve at most the built traces of the city that was: a deep, ancient stratification of meanings and values triggers people’s memory, as their renewed engagement shapes an alternative identity for the future Vestbyen.

PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT

PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT

Vestbyen, as almost every other European neighbourhood, can be read in terms of sameness and diversity: whether the greater portion of it is composed of housing, and people might lament a certain monotony, to a closer look it reveals sparse, diverse urban patterns with their specific morphologies, social compositions, typologies and uses.

Diversity is the greatest asset of Vestbyen.

Amid this diverse sameness, peculiar fragments can be identified, they are definitely others, or exceptional. Some of them are actually running, some others just have hidden potencies.

As Aalborg switches from producing goods into producing knowledge, it looks for a new identity: alternative narrative

PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT

The Hospital

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PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT

The Viaduct

PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT

The Pier PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT

PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT

The Back Court PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT

SOCIAL MARKET. Urban reactivation and mixed used development for a former industrial area.

Milan (IT) 2013. Competition 1st prize.

Area: 110 ha. Status: Stakeholders negotiation. Client: Confcooperative Lombardia

The city is like a huge market: a place where knowledge, experience and ideas are endlessly exchanged thanks to an ever deeper analogical and digital infrastructure. This is the background within which Rogoredo -a growing suburb of Milan- is likely to develop into an attractive creative and productive centre.

A strong perimeter infrastructure allows for new connections to regenerate the existing fabric while on the other hand it defines a border, a new strong identity for the entire neighbourhood.

The open space becomes the opportunity for new hybrid social practices to emerge. The public/private relation is shaped by a gradient of privacy levels, thanks to diverse floor treatments and height levels. A paved plane extends in between the building blocks to serve the commercial areas. The array of small shops, the big market hall, bars and restaurants, the Guest House, the Agora, the Play House, the Wellness House, the Ideas Workshop, shapes a complex and rich urban environment.

ACTIVE BOUNDARY

Complimentarily, vast green surfaces seeps into the urban courtyards and link the interior with the exterior of the blocks.

As the mobility hubs are located along the reinforced perimeter, a dense fabric of paths constitutes a whole car free core within the area.

The residential blocks enhance the traditional Milanese courtyard: a sequence of “gates� growing in privacy, from the public courtyard, trough community’s amenities on the staircase, trough the distributing galleries to individual entrances, grants an appropriate mediation to the intimacy of actual flats. The intervention is conceived as a complex social organism where shared amenities enrich the private modular dwellings Alongside with the physical intervention, a collaborative digital platform is implemented at the inhabitants disposal: the Digital Market, App and social network, works as a sharing management system to maximize the efficiency of collaborative social behaviours among the inhabitants.

NEIGHBOURHOOD GATES

1. Rogoredo tower 2. Ideas workshop 3. Start up house 4. Flexible dwellings 5. Active market 6. Rogoredo hotel 7. Medical device 8. Rebuscin house 9. Rogoredo 2.0 10. Eco island 11. Rogoredo sport club 12. Trapezoid park 13. Santa Giulia library 14. Cars hub

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COMMON FACILITIES 1. Kitchen 2. Laundry 3. Meeting 4. Office 5. Gym

FLEXIBLE APARTMENTS

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RETHINK ATHENS. Reconstruction of the main boulevard and of three major squares in the center of Athens.

Athens (GR) 2013. Competition, Special Mention (3rd Prize ex-aequo).

Area: ca 13 ha Client: Athens municipality, Onassis foundation.

In collaboration with: AlsoKnownAs Architects

The city is the spatial manifestation of the relationship between people and power and results as the stratification of consecutive political visions.

Democracy has nowadays lost its connection with the urban daily life and it is mostly sustained without people’s involvement; consequently, public space is perceived as the manifestation of decision-makers and people find it hard to claim their right to it.

The recent riots in Greece show how citizenship is now expressed through frustration and friction, as a reaction to topdown decisions, without being constructive.

Historically public space was more important than private space; in the Agora, Stoa was the place for discussion and exchange, surrounded by daily activities that constituted the core of the society.

The direct democracy of ancient Greece could be the reference for a contemporary urban model which includes members of all age and social groups, in which stoa as its spatial consequence inspires a new approach to public space.

Big urban gestures express a top-down set of mind and tend to neglect the existing layering of the urban realm. The latter resembles a palimpsest that includes successive materialization of the social economical and political conditions that prevailed from ancient Greece to the modern era.

However the current economic and social situation asks for flexible and cost-effective solutions that rely on people’s contribution. The crisis should be dealt with as an opportunity to introduce an additive approach that would lead to a greater benefit out of the minimum intervention.

The proposal provides an intense linear space that will

Meeting point

Linear spine

awaken hibernating potential for activities to shape the surrounding territory that will be unburdened of the existing restrictions to constitute a field enriched with traces of the city’s memories.

Technology carries along great potential for re-establishing the bond of citizens with the city; by grafting the infrastructure, which is an effective, costly and permanent intervention, the city will be provided with a framework for spontaneous appropriation.

Along with the tramline an infrastructural spine is created for small-scale elements to be plugged-in and serve people’s contemporary daily needs as expressed and modified in terms of locality and weather conditions. The mild Mediterranean climate expressed in a virtual nine-month summer instilled an innate gregariousness thereby affecting the character of their activities and the way they are spatially manifested. Kitchens, tables, lounge chairs, workstations, bathrooms, ponds, projectors, power sockets and Wi-Fi, water fountains, herb gardens, bike repairing stations, gyms create a habitable environment.

A phased construction approach allows the proposal’s basic tenets to adapt to any concurrent social, economic and political changes without interrupting the fluidity of experiencing the urban reality.

The expected appropriation will trigger people’s creativity, stimulate small-scale productions and revive arts and crafts for an alternative lifestyle. It will create the premises for a new practice of democracy, one interwoven with everyday life.

Punctual intervention

Diffuse equipment

Activity nurseries

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Masterplan 1.Korai square 2.Dikaiosynis square 3.Omonia square

OMONOIA SQUARE The flux of people, on the square’s ground level was until now limited to the perimeter, whereas the real hustle and bustle was taking place in the underground centre of the station.

To bring this activity to light, a crater is formed by lifting the square roof- lid off the ground, thus imbuing Omonoia Square with a long lost centripetal dynamic. Part of this dynamic is the transition from the Panepistimiou “forest” area to a clearing where the outlook of the cascading ponds merges with the reflecting pool in the centre of the square’s plateau to create a unifying horizon. The simple and explicit design gesture strengthens its function and character as an urban plaza.

KORAI SQUARE Korai due to its psition between two major city nodes, is bound to play a pivotal role. By introducing a linking element in the form of a light metal passageway housing a bike parking, Korai emerges as a piece of connective tissue between two main urban organs enabling them to act in unison. The increasing use of the bicycle as transport mean reinforces the hub like character of this walkway.

DYKAIOSSINIS SQUARE A place formerly perceived as bland and dispersed where nobody would enter, is being walled to trigger people’s curiosity. Once inside, the wall contains facilities for small art and craft workshops, that provide an outlet for creative ventures. Anew kind of active appropriation of urban space it thus enabled, with a moltitude of craftmanship items created, reinserting the small scale manifacture in the inhabitants experience.

Having lunch after a Mass, outside Agios Dionysios Catholic church on Panepistimiou Street

Enjoying a dusky outlook on a sea of green from a wooden terrace

Arts and crafts explored in the cool shade of Dikaiosynis workshop courtyard on a hot summer noon

Recreation time under the green shading “forest” canopy near Panepistimiou’s intersection with Omonoia Square

Book lockers and reading desks sprawling around a book nursery form the backbone of the “Book Crossing” exchange movement

A cool breeze emanating from Omonoia’s Metro station water curtain, offers relief to the crossing of the square’s plateau

NEW INTERFACES IN CIDADE DE DEUS. Social Housing upgrading and public space making with community involvement.

Rio de Janeiro (BRA) 2012. ETH Urban Design Research, Zürich.

Area: 120.58 ha Status: the project was embraced within the municipality’s guidelines for informal settlement upgrading.

Established in the 1960’s with a modernistic masterplan, the popular neighbourhood of Cidade de Deus in Rio de Janeiro failed to accommodate the population needs both functionally and socially. The double slab buildings set in place were mono functional residential units lacking any connection to the urban life. The space between them, an empty field.

During the years the inhabitants struggled to make this space suitable for they lives, extending their houses to accommodate growing families, attacking the empty space with illegal shops, workshops, verandas, tavernas and garages and lodgings.

Reading the evolutionary process, we recognized the paradigm of the defective design in the sharp separation of private from public, built from void, defined from undefined.

1960 The original set up repeats the same typology without any care about the open air spaces.

We translate the informal pattern of add-ons into a different scale, building a medievally formal framework that undoes the modernistic master plan and admits informal appropriation. The ultimate goal is to thicken the “boundary line”, to turn it from separation into a seamless transition from public to private and from outdoor to indoor. The new elements acting between the urban and domestic realm, affect both of them reshuffling the apartments from the inside and giving a new public face to the outside, and eventually creating a new urban space.

Clusters of buildings surround the newly shaped plazas and the relative residents constitute social cooperatives to run specific activities in each place, ultimately building up an autonomous system of urban facilities.

2012 The informal buildings extend from the slabs or occupy empty spots, giving character to the voids, turning them into public places.

Cidade de Deus in 2012: the informal additions are unnoticeable from the original buildings.

SHELVES

A non-invasive framework is set in place to stress and encourage the on-going process.

INFORMAL PLAZAS

The spontaneous informalization attacks the empty space and expands the interiors. At the same time, the in-between open areas gain a public face.

MODERNISTIC Public and private are separated by a sharp boundary.

EXTENSIONS CATALOGUE Facade extension

Apartments shift

LONG F ACADE EXTENSIONS

DOUBLE SLAB APARTMENT REDEFINED

Ground floor extension

LONG F ACADE EXTENSIONS

Green shelter

FREE STANDING

LONG F ACADE GREEN FACE

URBAN ROOMS

Freestanding building

Urban room

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BLIND FACADE

Blind facade EXTENSIONS extension

DOUBLE SLAB REPROGRAMMED

Slab Reprogramming

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URBAN ROOF

PLAN ADAPTABILITY

Boundary adaptability

Urban roof

NEIGHBOURHOOD ACCESSIBILITY

Local connections Access for cars/fire brigades/trucks Alleyway width 4m Pedestrian commercial streets width 6m Cooperative squares Garbage collection

COOPERATIVE SYSTEM

Masterplan axonometry

TYPOLOGY CROSS SECTION. The existing double-slab building is radically updated by the addition of an external, self-supporting shelf structure. The main structural system, including staircases, is preserved, but the added surface opens possibilities for a reshuffle of the internal organization. Keeping the position of the piping, an infrastructural ring of fixture runs trough the building, allowing flexibility, encouraging a wide variety of apartment types.

Model (in brown are the existing slabs)

Typical floor plan (preserved in black)

ELECTRICITY OF DETROIT. Territorial strategy for a new spatial and transportational organization of the shrinking city.

Detroit (USA) 2010. FAF Ferrara Urban Design Research.

Area: ca 1180 km2

Assumed that “The Infrastructure” is the power unit of the American city, the “sine-qua-non” condition, as one of the former leading city shrinks to a pre-urban state, the Project aims to maintain its main structure and to reshape it around the same structure.

We stated to reveal the hidden meanings of the infratructure and to fiund new uses, by focusing our efforts on the service spaces, the left-overs, the scraps that the engineering work necessarily demands.

Everything that sits inside the block (“isolato” in Italian, isolated in the litterary and metaphorical meaning of the word) will be shaped by uncontrollable, already on-going, processes (the return of “The Wild” somewhere, the birth

Vision 2050: The proposed strategy defines a new perimeter.

of artificial worlds somewhere else) . The Project’s ambition is to show the natural evolution of a system creating urbanity trough pure connection, a system which carefully avoids congestion but which gives an open support to unpredictable spaces. If the actual demographic decline keeps going, the next Detroit will be a smaller, but not less broad, city, with a new relation with nature, no more opposed to its network but mingled with it.

Detroit will be a city anyway if it maintains its back-bone in which the real urban life takes place: a Perimeter of Urbanity will garrison a wild territory and the Infrastructure will turn into the object of the city itself instead of a mere service.

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BOUNDARY A new infrastructure layout coagulates interest around a defined perimeter

HIERARCHY The inputs from analysis are taken as guide-lines to stimulate the on-going differentiation

CONGESTION Although the metropolis appears formless, the statistics revealed that a peculiar “field” of activity is clearly concentrated around a recognizable area.

Traffic shows where Life is.

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POTENTIAL

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3’067 miles

THE INFRASTRUCTURAL NETWORK

We stated to focus our efforts on the infrastructure as we felt it to be the sole public field in a more and more private city; besides, as the graph shows above, while the population decreased, the miles of road kept growing leaving a potential, large public space in-between.

The project aims to create a new Urban Perimeter which would give Identity to a new Metro-City by re-marking three existing roads.

The Perimeter will become an axial attractor for the public facilities while acting as a boundary against the uncontrolled expansion of the city. His infrastructural nature will connect the existing realities among them and on a larger scale to the national high-speed rail network.

THE INHABITED TERRITORY

4’425’100 inhabitants

1’291’500 inhabitants

10’135 km2

630 km2

437 inh/km2

2015 2025 Grand Central Station, Key Infrastructural connecting the local and Knots the national system

Grand Central Station.

THE NEW METRO-CITY

2040 An Urban Perimeter

2050 inh/km2

2050 Three different linear cities, one transport system

PATTERNS

The Infrastructure seeps into the existing urban texture re-defining and consolidating its pattern according to the character deduced from the analysis: it results in a different relations road/block for each one of the main axis.

URBAN CENTERS Woodward Ave. RURAL PARKWAY Hall Road SUBURBAN LANDMARKS Gratiot Ave.

Mt Clemens

MIXED ELECTRIC TRANSPORT

Following Obama’s recent investments in electric vehicles development, the project tries to head the transport energies to a coherent urban organisation. Each “station” declines itself according to its surroundings, becoming, first, an aggregation point for an ever moving society.

New Urban Light Rail

Pontiac

Interstate 94 Montana-Canada Main urban Roadway Regional Commuter Rail Interstate high-speed Rail

OPPORTUNITIES

One of the project’s main challenge is to generate an urban transformation without modifying the urban texture itself. All the efforts are spent in the spaces in-between the proper living areas and the infrastructure, finally making them touch. This would eventually create a new network overlaying the old city’s fabric.

Schools and Universities Entertainment Industrial Fields Parks and Cemeteries Hospitals and Clinics Shopping Malls

Downtown Detroit

LIVING BOUNDARY. CO2-neutral wooden kindergarten.

Trondheim (NOR) 2008. Competition 1st prize.

Area: ca 750 m2 Client: Trondheim municipality. in collaboration with Eliodoro Bigi, Nathalie Fourier.

The project investigates adaptive uses to seasonal and weather variations as a possible strategy for sustainable building.

The classes “boxes” are the warm core of the kindergarten and have a stable temperature all year long while the inbetween space (“grey space”) is a variable, tempered environment with different uses and temperature during the year.

In winter time activities are concentrated in the core. In middle season the temperate areas provides an open space to play, protected from wind and rain. In the hottest days this space can be fully open, extending seamlessly into the garden, between inside and outside.

This peculiar spatial articulation greatly minimizes heat losses since most of the walls of warm spaces are facing the intermidiate space, which in turns is heated passively.

The building sits gently on the site reading the existent topography and enphasizing two different zones of the garden: a “mineral” space, enclosed and protect by the building, and a more vegetal one, where thematic clusters provide adventourous exploration to the children. Mediating the transition between these two opposite sides, the kindergarden opens to both enjoying daylight from morning to evening.

The dividing line thickens to become a liveable space. A living boundary.

Storm water from the roof and the ground is harvested and.

18% of it reused to flush the toilettes and water the plants.

Visible treatment of storm water influences the children to think ecologically and creates a playful environment. Hot water is provided by solar collectors (168 m2) fixed on the southern roof. Solar spots are used in the classes to provide a diffuse and constant light even in the darkest days while in order to avoid heat losses, windows are minimised but still chiefly open views to the outside at child-friendly height.

Large windows instead offer direct sunlight to the intermediate space and carefully placed trees enable auto regulation of sunlight preventing overheating in summer.

The ventilation is controlled by an efficient FTX system where 85% of exhaust heat is recuperated from foul air in a heat exchanger. Warmed air is then distributed to the classes and moves outwards to the grey space where it is exhausetd.

The airflow out of the building is larger than the one in, creating a pressure difference that makes air moving naturally.

Site plan

N

W

S

N

Two different characters

The site possesses two different outdoor characters. The “mineral” space, enclosed and protected by the building, contrasts with the open “vegetal” one.

The boundary

The contrast is enphasized by defining a boundary. Adapting to the site the line follows the ground’s W E natural condition.

Meeting lineN

The line becomes thickens into a building creating an intermediate space. The junction surface correlates the different parts in a coherent, complex system.

W

E

S

N

S

N

W

E

E W

E

S

Orientation

The main volumeN is oriented toward North-Southin order to benefit of diffuse light all day long.

The building doesn’t have a main façade and opens to both gardens.

W

E

Link

The inner surfaceS acts as link between the outdoor spaces making visual and physical connections.

The third element

The building adapts to the site without trying to merge in the landscape. It creates relations between elements and becomes an organic part of a larger system.

25

+30˚ +20˚

20

+10˚ 15

0˚

Winter

10 -10˚ 5 Spring / Fall 0

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

-5

Projected yearly temperatures

Classroom defined and confined spaces for ordered activities

Grey space indoor play area feels like outdoor

Aug

Sep out

Oct grey

Nov

Dec boxes Summer

1

cold area

1.Technical Room

tempered area 417 m 55 %

84.6 m

2.Common Space

65.3 m

3.Open Kitchen

60.2 m

4.Closets

113.7 m

5.Cloack Rooms and Toilets

49.2 m

6.Meeting Point

44.0 m 55.2 m 51.3 m

heated area 289 m 45 %

56.0 m

55.0 m 33.1 m 39.0 m

4

5

8

7.Entrance 8.Unit 1 9.Unit 2 9

10.Unit 3 11.Unit 4

4

5

12.Main Kitchen 13.Staff ‘s Area 2

4

5 10

5

11

3

12 6

13

7

West elevation

Energy consumption for material transport

(distance x unitarian energy according to transport system; road=1,2 train=0.5 ship=0,07).

The main materials of the building are sorted within a 70km radius.

Materials produced far away are chosen for their special features and only where an efficient transport system is available.

The building as a Carbon Sink

A carbon sink is whatever is able to store carbon dioxide. A tree is a carbon sink, and if it conserves CO2 longer than his own lifetime, it obtains a negative carbon balance: that’s why is not really efficient to use trees for short time purposes such as making paper or fuel wood.

In an effort to produce a carbon-neutral building, the project tries to use all the resources in the most efficient way, in order to make the kindergarten work as a carbon sink in itself. Materials are chosen taking into account the amount of stored carbon, lifespan expectancy, transportation and manufacturing consumption.

The best solution is achieved with a mix of strong inorganic materials in problematic junctions (foamglas for the foundations, slate for the exterior cladding) and wood based materials in the more protected parts, where they can last for a very long time.

The site is treated with the same accuracy. The building adapts to the existing ground levels with very light foundations, minimizing earth works which are very carbon expensive. A pond on the lowest point of the site collects the storm water,cleaned by aquatic plants. This humid habitat can eventually turn into a peat bog which improves anaerobic decomposition ensuring a negative carbon balance. The entrance creates a new connection with the road making it an enjoyable space for the community, closely integrated to public transport.

Trondheim Slate Sør-trøndelag (Road) 84 Mj/t

Wood sorroundings (Road) 12 Mj/t

Foamglas Oslo (Train) 250 Mj/t Cork panels Portugal (Ship) 245 Mj/t

PULP 25% all kinds of paper approx. lifetime 3years WASTE 15% pellets, packaging or dumped approx. lifetime 1years SAWN 60% construction materials, furnitures, fuel wood approx. lifetime 20years

Longitudinal section classes boxes are highlighted in colour

paper

recycling

CELLULOSA FIBER

sawdust

cementification

WOODFIBER BOARD

chips bark panels

OSB phenol resin PLYWOOD

TIMBER

East elevation

metal gutter / snow stopper natural slate wooden secondary frames water tight bitumen sheet plywood panel 24 mm cellulosa fiber 250 mm vapour barrier plywood panel 24 mm cork panel (extra-insulation) 80 mm timber 50x100 mm technical installation space acoustic ceiling tiles natural slate air gap timber 40x40 mm wind stopper plywood board 24 mm cellulosa fiber 350 mm vapour barrier cemented wood fiber board 30 mm OSB finish panel 20 mm, coloured with water-based paint

wooden boards floor cork panel (extra insulation) 80 mm foamglas panel 50-200-50 mm stabilization sand gravel

Construction section

extra insulation panel dreinage