Milan Case Study - 1

The 11-storey "high house" in QT8

Built between 1949 and 1951, this 'high house' was designed by Pietro Lingeri and Luigi Zuccoli as a member of INA-CASA in Italy which is a production under the law of 'Bill to increase workers' employment, facilitating the construction of houses for workers'. This building was firstly built in QT8 near Olona river following the main heliothermic axis from eat to west. On site plan, the building owns a private natural park and is near to the metro station, which is the typical neo-rationalism architecture in Milan.

Structure & Function

The main structure system is reinforcement concrete frame structure that represent the new material application after WWII, applying shear walls for stair cases. On the grounf floor, it opens partly to the public as semi-public space, which is not the same as ‘five points of architecture' of modern architecture. This building preserve other parts of ground floor as apartment units, in order to fulfill the law for low income workers since after WWII and allow more units contained. For the gradient privacy design of the whole building, it is obvius in plans and sections from public to private in function setting: stair case - corridors - entrance - bathroom/kiitchen - living room/bedroom, in addition, living room and bedroom that are most private space own most private scenary of the natural park.

Milan Case Study - 1

Plan development

The proposal for plan design seems changed over years until the construction started. The top floor part is a series of studios for artists, and the units of cornor and middle types of typical floor were changed. For the ground floor, there are s open areas for children to play and leave pillars free, from the entrance, it detaches the mass of the building. On the final completion, every floor have single corridor and 2 external stair cases, every units own 50cm high steps at door and enjoy natural light from entrance, living rooms and bedrooms all face the east direction enjoying the quiet scenary of private park, while entrances and service rooms overlook the west front.

Aprtment units

In the part of unit design, ground floor and top floor both have one type of unit, and on typical floor there are 5 kinds of units including OneBedroom, Two-Bedroom, Three-Bedroom units. Every unit guarantee at least one living room or bedroom owning one private balcony. The main pattern is radial circulation starting from entrance to different functional rooms.

Facade description

Facade of this building was divided into three main parts: Bottom / Middle / Top, Bottom and Top mass withdraw a certain diatance and apply different shape of windows to distinguish different functions of housing units. On east facade, the position of private balconies are emphasized and there is a gap between the handrail and floor for drainage.

Facade transformation

For whole building, there is a canopy added on the roof on both facades of east and west. On east facade, we could recognise the tile layer was added in recent renovation, the orange coating we also assumed as new addition on the facade. While on the west facade, more ceramic tiles were added on the stair boxes and handrails of corridors. The openings of stair cases also changed over several decades. In addition, the steel drainage system on the roof of corridors was created in recent years, original drainage system was the same material as facade not steel.