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.