Polaris Real State SGR SPA
Parma, 2010-2014
Strutture Giovanni Nesti
Impianti Sergio Cantoni
Photography Polaris Real State
The project is architecture in the form of a city. The construction of 98 dwellings in the very high-density settlement area for Social Residential Housing (ERS) by Norma Rossi & Catelli in Parma was the winner of a PRUACS (Urban Redevelopment Programme for Housing at Sustainable Rents) regional call for tenders. As part of the approach coordinated by the Social Housing Foundation, the project opens up the city’s open spaces and shares collective service areas, interprets a differentiated combination of housing types chosen to offer solutions to diverse and complementary households. The system of pathways organises the volumes of the project in the perspective of an articulated urban landscape, characterised by a large green area to the north lined with long rows of preserved historical poplars, by the junction with Via Budellungo to the south and the close perspective of the junction between the road and Via Traversetolo, a historical road of territorial value. The architecture is divided into seven structures connected by bridges and served by three stairwell systems. Configured as a permeable courtyard with six levels open towards the park to the north, the layout is divided into a number of elements that stand, rotate or diverge according to the perceptual projections and the interaction with the location, which provides a stimulus for the differentiation of the individual components. Each side interprets – from a compositional perspective – the theme of views and the different conditions for exploiting natural light. Within this system of spatial orientation, the various configurations of two, three and four-room apartments envisaged by the plan are laid out. It is from the dialectic between typology and topology that the dwellings derive their reason for differentiation of identity that seeks urban articulation.
