Typology: Multifunctional Center

Location: Cuneo (IT)

Client: Fondazione CRC

Year: 2019

Status: Project

The project was developed around some key concepts: representativity, recognizability, inclusivity, multiplicity, reciprocity, orientation. The proposals want to create a relationship between the building and the city and between the building and the surrounding landscape. The drawing of the spaces and of the building arises from a general reflexion on the concept of orientation: how can a building convey immaterial values through its spatiality? We started from the compass as orientation instrument “par excellence”. The compass, with its circular shape, represents the relationship between the centre – in this case our building or the person’s point of view – and the surroundings – the city and the landscape. It represents the observer’s centrality in relation to the numerous directions that someone can take during the life. The rooftop project is inspired by this idea and it is oriented according to the cardinal points. The drawing from the top reveals the building’s centrality and its orientation function. The rooftop has its own access and it is imagined as a public space accessible independently from the other building’s activities. This space is generated around the fulcrum of the building – the centre of the compass – and it extends radially in each direction. The whole area has been imagined as a spatial installation with different functions: viewpoint, aggregative space, arena for events. The rooftop’s drawing expands beyond the building, proceeding in the lines of the park’s project. The facade is the main filter between the building and the city. The project provides a contemporary restyling that identifies the building’s identity. The perforated sheet steel creates a changeable play of transparency and movement. During the night the inner light filter through the windows and the facade shines as a magic lantern. The ground floor paving takes up the rooftop’s drawing creating a conceptual connection between the two spaces. Both of them are inspired by the concept of tactical urbanism, where the colour becomes a tool to requalify a space. If the rooftop is imagined as a big installation that talks about sociality, inclusion, contamination; the external spaces and the facade as a hinge between the building and the city; the ground floor is a changeable, flexible and dynamic exhibition space.

1. External spaces redevelopment:
The external spaces project is the ideal extension of the facades, of the ground floor and of the rooftop. The intention was to create a relationship between the external spaces and the architecture, transforming an unused area in a connective space between the building and the city. The internal flooring design extends beyond the whole building where it creates paths on the ground that draw grassy flowerbeds and meeting spaces. The existing trees are maintained and integrated with other plants. New connections will be created between the ground floor and the external areas, in correspondence of the main axes of the building, to permit a versatile use of the spaces. Through the controlled gates opening, it will be possible a public use of the park in established times, in order to give to the city a public park.

2. Ground floor renovation:
The ground floor will have the function of welcoming users and hosting temporary events and exhibitions. The flooring takes up the design of the rooftop and of the external appliances to strengthen the relation between the building and its surroundings. The design of this space provides management versatility as the predominant character. To facilitate its attention as an exhibition room we have imagined a series of light and removable devices that in a subsequent design phase are used in a coordinated manner with the rest of the project, proposing them again themes of general inspiration, such as compass orientation axes and materials.

3. Rooftop requalification:
The solar paving project responds to two main needs: the first one, required by the client, is to create a space for events; the second one is to establish a landmark. Considering the requests to propose something light, that has the minimum increase in weight on the roof slab, the project concerned essentially the remaking of the decking introducing a flooring design inspired by the orientation concept (compass). The same design will be taken up in elevation with some metal devices that regulate the function of shading and support for swings. It will also be possible to imagine an arrangement with some green flowerbeds made of low maintenance plants able to grow on a thin and poor substrate. The flat roof is imagined as an experiential installation, a urban park that becomes an aggregation point usable in a plurality of situations. In an era in which maps and satellite images are used by millions of people, the pavement design will become a real territorial sign, able to tell the activities carried out inside the building.

4. Facade:
The facades restyling is aimed at conveying the concepts of representativeness, recognition and dialogue with the context through architecture. The design of the new facades is inspired by these assumptions, creating a light and iridescent diaphragm which, through the play of curves, creates a two-way relationship between building and city. The waves of the new metal cladding are exactly aligned to the current scan of voids and solids of the existing windows: the concave part always corresponds to a void and opens the view towards the city; the convex one, always corresponding to a solid part of the current facade, has small holes and it becomes blind in close proximity to the rear wall. The metal structure of the facade will be anchored to the heads of the floors by metal brackets. If necessary, the weight of the metal structure of the facade can be unloaded to the ground through punctual metal elements in order not to burden the floors. The surface is made using modular elements in perforated sheet metal. On the circular surface, the sheet metal is corrugated; on the linear surface, the sheet metal is plain. The holes on the flat surface are regular for the whole surface. The design of the alignments and perforations is designed to make the facades highly evocative both day and night. During the day the effect will be that of a continuous veil that becomes more transparent on the concave waves towards the city. At night, the alignment with the windows will allow transparency and a play of light that will bring greater strength and dynamism by adding simple colourful filters to the windows. This game is strongly evocative both from the outside during the night and from the inside during the day, from where you can see pieces of the city filtered by films of different colours depending on the point of view, evoking the perceptive charm of Daniel’s works Buren. If the wavy shape symbolically takes up a bi-univocal relationship between building and city, which sometimes advances sometimes retracts in a game of mutual influences, the lightness of the perforated sheet underlines the concept of permeability. Permeability of access and ideas, of stimulating influences, of space half-hidden from view that invites discovery. The waves of the facade on the roof level create a multiplicity of inlets that can offer different alignments and points of view on the surrounding landscape: each wave becomes a belvedere with a unique view of a well-defined portion of the panorama. We like to imagine this simple aspect as the symbolic hope of seeking and pursuing the most suitable direction in which to orient the future.