LAURA BASELLO Architecture portfolio
I am a young architect, graduate in Architecture at Politecnico of Milano in 2016, with a thesis about the expansion of the campus of Harvard University in Boston. During these years I have had the opportunity to investigate the architecture at different scales, from urban planning to the interior design and to enhance my skills, from concept to architectural design, up to the detail’s drawing. I am an enthusiastic and ambitious person. I like to face new challenges and working in team: I believe , in fact, in the importance of exchanging views to ensure the successfull of design process. With this portfolio I would tell about myself and my skills through a selection of the most significant projects I had designed.
PROJECTS page 6
01. Sections and caves, Boston | ARCHITECTURE
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02. La Grande Brera, Milano | ARCHITECTURE
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03. A plaza for Paris, Paris | URBAN DESIGN
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04. Sound Park, Milano | INTERIOR DESIGN
2016 Master thesis Second prize, “Michele Silvers” Degree Award, VI edition
SECTIONS AND CAVES Urban relationships and spatial continuity between the new science campus of Harvard University and Allston district Designed with Giorgio Gatti
Boston | Allston, Harvard University The expansion program of Harvard University in Boston, across the Charles River, is set up as a great opportunity to reflect on the relationship between territory and University. The project aims to steer the new Enterprise Research Campus in a city organized by macronatural structures: Emerald Necklace and Charles River, building new dynamics and different hierarchies. Thanks to a reformulation strategy of urban structure -nowadays various and unregulatedan architectural element of large scale is founded to develop an emerging volumetric sequence of public buildings, from north to south along the Stadium Way (the new road axis that links Harvard with Boston University).This device is able to act as a backbone structuring the future development of the city; it is proposed as a cross-linking system between Cambridge and Allston, where the urban frame is less consistent. A macro-system of courtyards with a strong public character mediates the relationship between the new campus
studio | Architetcture and construction design 2 6
axes and the tiny existing residential pattern. Three natural wedges are inserted transversely to the public strip, anchoring it to the territory and giving soft breaks to the immediate context. These pauses are seen as opportunities to generate architectural landmarks; here lies an inhabited bridge of 160 meters length, which links the residential neighbourhood to the academic district. The building is organized as a sequence of spaces in communication between themselves. At the lower levels, the new “suspended ground” hosts the library and media center; above an inhabited roof offers conferences and meetings’ spaces for the scientific community. In between, the stone is being progressively eroded and levelled in order to draw the inner longitudinal spatial path as a large cave, that runs through the building. This path is interpreted as an urban infrastructure: place of relationships, exchange and encounter on many levels, reinforcing a continuity built since the territorial scale.
prof | Emilio Battisti, Francesca Battisti
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• THE URBAN SYSTEM From the public strip to the natural wedges to generate a new vision of the university’s campus, totally integrated in the city
Existing conditions
Public strip, green pauses and architectural landmarks
Urban patterns
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• FROM LOCAL TO ARCHITECTURAL SCALE The construction of continuity, a longitudinal path digging the macrostructure of public buildings
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• Inhabited roof
THE PUBLIC PATH
The inhabited bridge as an “infrastructure” with sections and caves in sequence
Continuous space
Public space
exhibition space Suspended ground
Ground connections
Exhibition space
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public
terrace
exhibition space
exhibition room
temporary exhibitions space
auditorium’s lounge
Auditorium’s lounge, temporary exhibition space
forum
“belvedere” on park
creative workshops
“Belvedere” on park
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• THE LANGUAGE The stone is eroded, dug, leveled and smoothed, showing the strong volumetric component
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• THE CONSTRUCTION DETAIL A bridge structure over the Stadium Way
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2015
LA GRANDE BRERA “An architecture for learning” integrated in the city, as a driving force of urban transformation Designed with Giorgio Gatti
Milano | Caserme Mascheroni-Montebello The military caserme area, now enclosed by walls and isolated from the city, compares on the sides with different urban patterns and heterogeneous soils, constituting a point of junction between the consolidated city and the transformation areas, between soft and hard soils. We propose a reconversion of the military site, mending different part of the city. A soft green soil breaks through the block to the north, becoming the final piece of an urban park system that runs from east to west; new buildings of the Accademia di Brera compare with existing conditions and resume the compact block through a strong volumetric component. The new complex infact aims to mediate
studio | Architecture and construction design 1 20
the transition from the city center to the peripheric neighborhoods. The glazed ground floor is fragmented into small volumes (performing commercial functions or common areas for students) as well as to ensure its total permeability and openness. It generates a continuum from the street on the south side, where is collocated the student housing building (carved on the front by two large “portals”), to the academyc’s representative spaces up to the more informal once like the park area, that penetrates in the building generating a public courtyard inside of it. Above, classrooms and workshops define some volumes, coated with metal panels, and connected to each other through a common plan of distribution.
prof | Emilio Battisti, Francesca Battisti
The north-west Milano The urban patterns and morphological landmarks
The buildings From compact blocks to the opened onces, from consolidated city to the transformation areas
The public open spaces Soft and hard soil at different scales
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set design workshops
• A CONTINUUM AT GROUND FLOOR
student housing auditorium
drawing and sculpture workshops
library
art gallery classrooms
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• THE ACADEMY COMPLEX
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• STUDENT HOUSING
Single student dwellings
Common students dwellings
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• THE CONSTRUCTION DETAIL
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2014
A PLAZA FOR PARIS Design of a new system of public spaces between the rue de Rennes and the Gare Montparnasse Designed with Valentina Cianflone, Giorgio Gatti
Paris | Montparnasse Every year 29 milion passengers walk throughout the warmholes under the Tour Montparnasse and the basement of the great commercial block in front of it. This one lives Paris as a big billboard made of steal and concrete. The “waterproof � ground attack and anonymous terrace roof help passersby to idly watch the building. Everything works under the ground zero, from the train station towards the subway lines, where the flows of the passengers move between the city centre and the suburban areas. The ground floor is delated, the parking spot is brought to the top replacing the existing mall; this one is put under the ground zero in between the people moving among public transports. A unique continuous fluid space, invading the base of the tower, connects Boulevard de Montparnasse with
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the train station; here the access is allowed from the basement where a new front is created in continuity with the existing one. The space previously occupied by the mall is uncovered and reversed, pandering the rhythms of the city, like a big anthill. We have designed for Paris a square covered by the parking lots, a container of different speeds and various activities, under the zero level, but always in communication with the urban facts. The architectural scale of the new building recreate the urban dimension, altered by the height of the tower, with an essential architectural language: big reticular beams invade the space at high height reducing the supports on the ground level; the soft glass coating with an interactive bright ceiling ensure the total variability of the space, where people give quality to it as the main characters of architecture.
prof | Nicola Russi
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Design strategies
Existing conditions
Elimination of the mall
Reversing e replacement of parking lots on the roof and commercial activities in the basement
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2012 Mentioned project, Workshop “OneManLiving”
SOUND PARK A “small space for living” and revitalize marginal areas Designed with Amedeo Noris, Federica Torri
Milano | Bovisa The theme of music is investigated as a tool for fun and entertainment for young and old people, also becoming a place of collective experimentation and revitalization of degraded parts of the city. Sound Park consists of a system of three modules, designed in relationship to the size of the human body (to be available to everyone). Mobility is possible thanks to hinges, inserted on the sides of the structure, that make it adaptable to the
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context: for this reason it can be placed everywhere, not just into the city, but also in any architectural context. The system, closed, occupies the area of only one parking space, and once it is opened, the equipment is accessible from inside and outside. The modules differ in materials (although the main structure is made up entirely of L-profiles, bolted between them), by type of sound (strings, percussion, ...) and for the different permeability of the coatings.
prof | Yuri Mastromattei, Michele Ugolini
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THANK YOU !