The building and urban regeneration project involves reclaiming a large building complex by maintaining the existing structure, demolishing the façades and rearranging the interiors, with a change of use from offices to residential. The building - former headquarters of the local health authority - stands on the Roman Cardo of Corso Vittorio Emanuele between the Church of Santa Teresa del Carmelo and the monastery of San Raimondo. The end part of the complex rotates and is laid out along the historic road near these monumental features. The design reorganises the interior space and redesigns the frontages, calibrating them to the surroundings and concentrating the living areas around the most significant openings. The relationship with the context activates a series of relationships that characterise the design of the façades. The relationship with the building to the side is reinterpreted as a series of associations that link the stringcourses of the first building with the design of the second one and see the taller volumes pulled back to create a distance from the existing context. The system of existing porticoes is redesigned with connecting urban invitations and new reception portals, while the façades are arranged on three distinct, slightly staggered planes to reflect the dialectic between internal distribution and the external context: the first, opaque white, varies in thickness and size in relation to the internal distribution, tapering off as it reaches the living rooms; the second, with a wooden curtain wall, contains the sliding planes of the door frames; the third, on the other hand, is the plane of the large windows and openings. The corner element that emerges for five storeys, now completely closed, opens up towards the historic centre, reaching out towards Piazza Cavalli not far away, presenting different openings according to the interiors and perspectives that can be activated, with a large glass window at the top corresponding to the double-height space of the head section.
InvestiRE SGR
Piacenza, 2012-2013
