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This project represents the output of an academic course of Design Studio II, where the project's site is considered as a model for spatial & programmatic organization of relationships between program, layout, and form.
It aims to foster the existing functions and activities through the integration of a new program to the site that can benefit from it's vicinity to a university campus, neurological institute, and a botanic garden. The concept was to rethink the same lot of land 3 different times, as the main approach is changed each time according to a specific design theme.
Cascina Rosa
Research Thematic Avant-projets
Discipline
ARCHITECTURE
Year
2012-2013
Workplace
Politecnico di Milano M.Sc. - School of Architecture and society
Typology
Mixed-use
Location
Milan, Italy
Scope of Work
M.Sc. Design Studio II.
Project 1,2 & 3 [Pair]
Project 4 [Individual]
This project aims to introduce an urban farm to the local community where they can blend in with a wider range of mixed activities. In doing so, the layout design will be driven by the landscape as a main theme for the entire project.
It is a complex of vertical farming pods that are made of light prefabricated structures and stacked on top of gardening allotments. Thus, defining a pattern was essential to focus on the rules for the distribution of activities and functions within a given space. Accordingly, the idea was to manipulate the site as a playground in a way that blurs the line between architecture and landscape, in other words, between the built structures and the ground. In order to achieve this, the ground floor was completely opened and accessible to the public as a potential weekly local market for selling food, cooking and other social activities related to the community gardening program.
01. Landscape | Ground
The masterplan is made up of a series of stacked layers, each layer is permeable enough to alter the one beneath it and encourage programmatic mutations. The project comprises of research center, students housing and residence for researchers all set on a grid of modular volumes. The grid is made up of axes and strips that work in continuity and multiplicity respectively, where the continuity represents speed, direction, and flow of movement, while the multiplicity represents the overall concentration of functions and time intervals between the strips.
The generated congestion which is unstable, uncontrolled, and unprogrammed, opposes the grid which is often structured and controlled. Therefore, the superimposition of flow diagram and strips was the proper approach to construct multiple links between sequences of events within the entire network of workshops, labs, classrooms, patios and farming orchards. Such juxtaposition of variable programs aims to proliferate a wider spectrum of unprecedented activities and accedential clustering resulting in a more dynamic and coexisting Mat-Building.
02. Typology | Morphology
The program was divided into three main buildings that were to be placed on the perimeter of the land lot. The concept is to promote the facades of the buildings as the protagonist feature that guides the whole design process.
The facades feature two contrasting skins that come from the same triangular grid:
The first is a porous opaque-solid envelope that wraps the facades facing the street which makes the three buildings look like one mass. While the other one is rather transparent and folded between the buildings forming an inner urban canyon. This inner transparent skin acts as a mitigation surface between the outdoor canyon (public), the indoor atriums (semi-private), and the buildings (private).
03. Skin | Facade
The final project is based on the comprehension of the thematic design excercises shown above.Thus, the layout was developed through a series of diagrams that define the guidelines for the design process which aims to create a dialogue between the public and the semi-private activities.
The terrain was manipulated as a mat of green hills and a sloped plaza that leads to a pivotal space where the circulation through the entire cluster of social activities takes place.
The plaza is divided into strip allotments for urban farming where the grid lines converge at the main facade and a unique skin emerges from the ground to emphasize the entrance.
