S2pm Studio Portfolio

Any form of livable space is inevitably influenced by social behavior. S2pm reactivates its principles in a coeaval environment. It’s through a profound comprehension of its multiple actors that we begin to shape spaces that are likely to give responses such as inclusive values and integrated patterns.

Accordingly, design is neither a matter of formal speculation nor a desire of standing out personal fascinations. It rather is to be conceived as a tool to achieve accurately answers to issues, be those social, political, economical or aesthetical.

S2pm is an attempt to read architecture and spatial transformation through a clear-eyed design elicited by analytical studies of the social impact on urban evolution.

Team

Margherita Pagani, Arch. MSc AAM

Milan, 1997. Graduated from Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio with Professor Frédéric Bonnet in 2022. She worked as an architect at Nomos Arquitectos (Madrid), Stability Studio (Tel Aviv), Oglo architects (Paris). She is currently working at Michel Desvigne Paysagiste (Paris). 1/3 of S2pm

Jacopo Anzolin, Arch. MSc AAM

Padova, 1997. Graduated from Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio with Professor Kersten Geers in 2022. He worked as an architect at Hirsch-Corti Architecture (New York City), Bruther Architects (Paris), Laboratorio Permanente (Milan). He is currently working at DPA (Paris). 1/3 of S2pm

Beatrice Zago, Arch. MSc AAM

Savona, 1997. Graduated from Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio with Professor Frédéric Bonnet in 2022. She worked as an architect at É ric Lapierre Experience (Paris). She is a collaborator of Caryatide Publisher since 2018. She is currently working at Fresh Architectures (Paris). 1/3 of S2pm

Selected projects

Reuse Zürcher Zentralwäscherei

Zurich 8005

Undecided Frames

Bruxelles 1070

A Large Form Affori 20161

Delirious Milan

Milan 20154

Bassin Vergote

Bruxelles 1000

A Large Form Affori 20161

Le Sixième bloc

Bruxelles 1000

REUSE ZÜRCHER ZENTRALWÄSCHEREI

Zurich 8005

Margherita Pagani. Reuse project with Professor Philipp Esch.

“The project finds its strength in the tensions generated by opposites. On one side, the raw and industrial context in the basement - a topography consisting of subtraction that creates, in addition to the existing structure, unique environments. In contrast, the light architecture is constituted by the shed and the essentiality of the new buildings. The existing presented itself with an uneven pattern in its different parts: precisely in this disharmony we grasped the design opportunity, highlighting the construction individual elements. The different intensity of natural light distinguishes the spatial unit.”Our project is a set of three buildings with different functions: a center for the elderly, a public pool, a bar and a coworking space. Starting from the context, the idea is to recreate the two street fronts on Neue Hard and Josefstrasse with two additions, creating on the second front a landmark for the neighborhood.Although with different formal characteristics, the two facades have a permeable ground floor with a public porch and ramps and staircases that serve to overcome the threshold of 1.20 m. Starting from the outside, the idea was to make pedestrian the two roads facing the east and west facades, now used as loading and unloading for trucks, and plant a row of trees on the east side, an in -

tervention already developed in different areas of the neighborhood. Moving on to the pool areas, the idea was to subtract from the pre-existing concrete slabs using the underground floors already present to gain the necessary height and thus creating an organic topography. Starting from the entrance, the visitor is forced to descend a floor and then find himself in an unexpected environment that creates a dialectic between the raw and industrial atmosphere of the former factory and the new elements. The area of the swimming pools for children, circular pools dug into the floor slab of the ground floor, together with the existing pillars, create a unique and evocative space also in the basement where there is a wellness area articulated between the existing pillars.The part of the retirement home is a courtyard building where there are different types of rooms depending on the needs. The complex hosts 100 elderly people, divided into five floors, each with common areas. Talking about the facades, the part of the Shed remains unchanged while the north and south facades show our intervention. The coworking space is characterized by a grid that filters the light evenly, but with the possibility to open it according to the needs to have direct light beams. The second facade, in steel, alternates full and empty spaces with a system of common loggias between several apartments for socialization.

UNDECIDED FRAMES

Bruxelles 1070

Jacopo Anzolin. Diploma project with Professor Kersten Geers.

Brussel, a city once deeply rooted in an industrial heritage, is today investing in policy to redevelop urban manufactures into the city, completely converted to tertiary.

The aim of the project is to develop a Centre de Formation de Metièrs, creating a framework that embraces a diversity of practices related to the world of craft and art in a multidisciplinary context such as a Hall of Many Things. The site lays exactly at the edge of two mono functional areas: an industrial and a residential one. The intention depicted from the site plan is to formally reconnect the neighbourhood into one hybrid solution: a mixed use building for working, living and learning. Simply interlocking the two volumes, representing this two different worlds, the interconnection of the two is assumed as a collective space for the this learning institution. The housing

and the production space becomes different, yet interconnected moments taking over an idea of champ or field, a landscape of moments just inside one building. The project in its very simplistic appearance is conceived as a pivotal element of the neighborhood, and its presence is strictly related to the different context every time is facing it, from the functional aspect from the river to the monumentality from the street, underlining the istitutionalized character of the buulding: a framework that embraces a diversity of practices and allows for a multitude of voices related to the world of craft and art. This friction generates a various sets of thresholds that allow different levels of publicness of the complex, from the street to the garden and from the workshop to the housing units. Housing blocks are combined to be one extended public floor, and thoughts to explore different ways to live the proximity to the factory.

A LARGE FORM

Masterplan and social housing units

Affori, 20161

Beatrice Zago. Project with Professor Kersten Geers.

The carpet like building occupies the entire surface in correspondence with the Affori FN station, the railroad that links Milan with the Northern part of Lombardy and Switzerland and the metro that takes directly to the city centre. Composing this new part of the suburban city, the building insert itself as a plate in the urban context creating a new district. The surface of 200 meters by 120 meters occupies the entire range of the site expanding the strict structure as a contemporary Mat building. We think our daily life as a linkages between labor market economics and

housing development, we decided to design a social condenser targeting the new creative class of young people that can enjoy the urban life living in a suburban context. Developing in height we can find different conditions of privateness, mixing infrastructure and housing, working and leisure. The ground floor radicate around the centre of the building where the station is located, while moving towards the upper floors the apartments follows the rule of living in over- sized spaces allowing the residential living to contain not only a domestic life but even collaborative slots that hosts creativity.

DELIRIOUS MILAN

Milan 20154

Jacopo Anzolin. Project with Professor Kersten Geers.

A tall house, a skyscraper, is the pure product of the capitalist logic of the metropolis, in the sense it origins from the speculative conception of maximizing space on a limited footprint. That is what happen also in the logic of the contemporary economy: the era of postindustrial economy, where logistic systems took place on production. We strove to translate this concept into a dwelling building, making it, inevitably, a generic object.

We stressed the idea of mixed-use buildings, merging the functions of dwelling and storage logistic hub, in a vision of post-human architecture. On one hand there is the practical result of cutting housing costs, on the other, the project become a manifesto of the metropolitan living: an infrastructure, a generic outside,

that inside reveals its own features and complexities, balancing between the sensation of living into a machine and at the same time to feel a domestic atmosphere.

The construction aesthetic evokes Banham’s essay Anatomy of the Building where the house itself has been omitted and there is only the mechanical services that continue to accumulate to the point that housing is not even more contemplated: the structure of the building recalls industrial elements and humble materials but reach its monumental condition in its shape and height. The external scheme of pillars and cantilever beams, where the hub system’s shelves are hanged, as well as the plug-in apartments, is based on the idea of a vertical matt building, to be composable and, in a sense, potentially endless.

BASSIN VERGOTE

Refurbishment of the commercial harbour of Bruxelles Bruxelles, 1000

Margherita Pagani. Diploma project with Professor Frédéric Bonnet.

The project idea started with the analysis of the entire Brussels Canal and on the masterplan produced by the Brussels City Council called “Horizon 2040”.This masterplan involves improvements through the canal area. There are some long-term goals for the localized areas, in particular, talking about the harbour around the Bassin Vergote, the main goal is the urban logistics intensification around the costruction sector, the productive activity that characterizes the area. In addition to water transport, the one to be preferred in terms of costs and pollution, the site is strategic for the distribution of raw materials for construction with land transport: it is part of the project “Horizon 2040” also the new tir center where the intercity transports have been conveyed.Another significant theme is the citizen’s spatiaand visual relationship with water: for the entire length of the channel there is at least one bank that is accessible, except for the Bassin Vergote. The spatial ruptures are both physical and visual due to traffic problems and visual obstacles. The site’s main topic is about fluxes: every existing industry needs a connection with water for the blue transport and a connection with the street for the TIR one. Because of these flows, which make the area alive from the economic point of view, peo -

ple tend to use alternative roads to move and the site represent an urban void. The project aim to divide the private, the semiprivate and the public areas of the site in order to bring back citizens to use the banks of the basin and to make the most of the relationship with water. Getting more into the project there are three key elements: the industrial park with the preservation of existing industries, the promenade: an elevated walkway to solve the crossing of people and TIR and the social condenser, punctual interventions around the basin to revitalize it.Existing industries and new interventions coexist forming a sequence of different spaces, each with its own peculiarities. It’s a system of public spaces that lay between the leftover space of the industrial buildings and doesn’t want to create a ceasure between the public and the industrial space but, on the contrary, try to embrace them.I added some punctual intervention around the basin following the needs of the area:t here are two green areas, in correspondance with the entrances of the area: one from the city centre and one from the masui district. The two walkways, elevated both for the security of people and in order to create different point of views of the area and the new buildings, linked to the promenade.The site works as an unit: people here can simply cross the site, can learn, can live, can produce and can expose their art.

THE SIXTH BLOCK

Masterplan, landscaping and social housing renovation Bruxelles, 1000

Beatrice Zago. Diploma project with Professor Frédéric Bonnet.

The site is located in the western part of the central area of the pentagon. We can also define the buildings that are now occupying the space, the 5 social housing blocks, the sport hall and the community center. The project rely itself on a research about what inequality means in a social housing neighborhood. Focusing on what is a common situation happening in the post war social housing areas I’ve encountered the main aspects that causes issues based on security in the public spaces. I’ve identified the problematic blind spots and analyzed what are the most common paths people take to cross the site. So what can we do to create an inclusive public space?

I’ve started drawing a connecting line throughout the site that then developed into the changing of shades in the pavement, to have a sort of fil rouge that could connect all the exterior spaces and to have a base in which draw what will be my social activators. These activators need to be diverse, so that’s why the exterior is working with specific zones and the interior adds up the missing functions on the ground floor. Together they create an environment of connection and community that allows the complete use of the space. The first thing that I’ve looked into are the

playgrounds, that allows a very extensive use of the space. A very clear specificity I gave to the sport playground is the use of a court in a more open and accessible way, giving different sports area and allowing relax in the court opens up to the inclusivity issue that is very much found in the fenced normal basketball court. The second focus area is the children playground that allows the accessibility to different ages and confront itself with the nearby primary school to give a wider play space for the children. The vegetable gardens is connected to the communal kitchens on the ground floor. The last step of creating this exterior space was to build different places to perform, these stages are performative areas where the individual give the identity to the space. I’ve then added a new building that hosts community activities such as study halls and library. The question of visibility can be given by the new facades of the buildings. The aim of the buffers is to create different directions in the urban space and new situation of discovery. Each apartment has a series of moving walls that allows the best functionality of the interior, to make it suitable to anyone. As we can see one thing I’ve focused on is the openness of the kitchen as in some cultures the kitchen is a very important space of intimacy for women so the open kitchen would not be proper.