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Architectural design studio 3, thesis design studio (final architectural design studio) 

Professor Riccardo Canella, Marco Canesi, Marco Valsecchi, Micaela Bordin with V. Donadio, Alberto, C. Mezzetti 5th and 6th semesters, two group works 1 territorial urban analisis 1 masterplan, 3 architectural projects

marks: studio 3: 30/30 with honour; thesis studio: 30/30 with honour; thesis discussion and bachelor mark: 110/110 with honour

location: Valtellina (province of Sondrio) / Valmalenco (municipality of Landaza)

The laboratoy demanded the students to acquire the proper instruments to allow a social and civil architecture to give an appropriate and alternative answer to the new issues emerging from the changes of contemporary society. The learning process adopted was problematic and operative, in order to study human activities and to place them in a way of development alternative to globalization. Indeed, the field research allowed to assume a critical knowledge of the structural facts – production system, transport infrastructure, society – so as to link the architectural proposal to a politic of intervention that concerned the development of the productive forces and their territorial organizations following a specific political choice. Because of the involvement of these structural aspects, the architecture was proposed as a plan of activity, and not as a mere formal exercise. As a result, its design character was based on the knowledge concerning the context and the critical interpretation of its needs. The urban planning research is rooted to the theory for an Italian development based, among others, on the securing of its land from hydrogeological instability – which the lands of Valtellina are highly exposed to. This objective, and the strategy for its implementation in Valtellina, were elaborated by professor M. Canesi and led to our activity plan for a new cable transportation infrastructure in Valmelenco, the recovery of alpine pastures, the empowerment of stone working facilities, and the construction of the new civic centre. This research was conducted by a team of ten people made of four groups. I investigated what concerns local demography and society, collecting and analysing data and interpreting what new services could be necessary and / or sustainable after a predicted growth in population. Two main fieldworks were conducted: a photographic census of the existing unoccupied housing in the municipality of Lanzada to demonstrate that, even with a growth in population caused by the new economical asset and new jobs, there will be no need of new dwellings because of the enormous amount of abandoned building and unused vacation houses; an inquiry about the present cultural and aggregative activities – that including sports, theatre, music, folkloristic practices, volunteering and tourism – in order to understand a possible implementation. The latter study, expanded to a province scale, led to the proposal of a new opera house integrated with the network of Italian opera houses. Our plan of activity, thought for the barycentre between the villages, included the terminus of the new cable transportation infrastructure, the new main square with a new town hall shared by the three municipalities, a new health centre, the new opera house with acting and music schools, the new public central library, a new covered market square. The architectural design needed to create a place with civic values, allowing the democratic debate and its social and cultural qualities, to represent the alpine environment and its people, helping the expressions of the local spirit. To do so, mountain architectures such as sanctuaries (e.g. Oropa), fortresses in Lombardy, Sacri Monti (“sacred mountains” of Piedmont and Lombardy) were studied for their typologies, scales, figuration and relationship with their surroundings. After the masterplan editing, which included a system of covered paths and elevation systems, I designed the opera house, the market square and the terminus. The latter is meant as a highly mechanized building. Its perpetually moving core in the upper part of the complex is the representation of the alacritous productivity of the developing area and the empowered use of city. The opera house is a 600 seats theatre of the national circuit of opera houses.

This studio led to the thesis entitled:   Alpine economy, alternative development1, new social subject The environmental issue2 as a resource for a new development inside the alternative market3: the Valtellina4 as a paradigmatic example for a total control over the environment, for the complete safeguard and enhance of the anthropised landscape, for the total employment as a global politic for the environment. The overtaking of the social conflict-gap between plain and mountain, city and countryside, industry and agricolture and new means of production. Tirano, Morbegno, Sondrio5: a world forum for the control over antropised echosystems: the reuse of the abandoned building patrimony, new spaces for jobs granted in regime of “close network”6 and “use of city” in the polycentric setting of Valmalenco. Activity plan: recovery of alpine pastures of the municipalities of Caspoggio, Lanzada, Chiesa in Valmalenco and, on the barycentric decentralization between them, the new cable infrastructure and its relative station for a new accessibility, new unified civic centre, new opera house, new health centre, empowerment of the existing school system, new music school, new public library, all imminent to the new market covered square.

1.3. they refer to economic and urban theories of M. Canesi 2. problems caused by the abandoning of antrophic landscapes, by excessive antripisation, by unproper prevenction of earthquake and hydrogeological risks, as well as infrastructure planification. 4. Valtellina is a west - east valley in northern Lombardy, together with its secondary valleis and Valchiavenna, it forms the province of Sondrio. 5. the three main towns, corresponding to the three subdivisions of the valley: low, middle, and upper valley. 6. close network and use of city refer to urban theories of M. Canesi and others.

all project design and drawings were made using Autodesk Revit. The research was made with C. Sandrini, Y. Lee. The masterplan design and final presentation was made with S. Sciarpa.

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Architectural design studio 2

Prof. Michele Caja, Matteo Bruggi, Claudio Zappone                                       with Sotirios Zaroulas, Marzia Foglia, Claudio Biraghi, Pierfrancesco Sacerdoti

2nd and 3rd semester, 1 individual architectural analisis, 3 individual architectural projects, 1 collective urban texture analysis and masterplan design location: via Palermo, Milan mark: 30/30

The laboratory takes part to a research, conducted by the group coordinated by prof. Michele Caja, about the design of contemporary houses in the historical European context. The approach to the city is defined as “realistic” and it aims to “continue to develop the centuries-old culture of European city, with its broad spectrum of housing typologies and complex ownership relationships in order to preserve the city as it has been for centuries: a site of innovation nevertheless anchored in tradition”1.

Different assignments build up the final project. To a first individual analysis of a building from the last century designed in Milan followed a group work to study an area of the city and to propose a masterplan. Thereafter the design of each building was singularly assigned to each team member.

In this context, the city needed to be read “as a layered text of non-erasable permanencies, taken in the sense given by Aldo Rossi, as concrete and real manufactured objects”2. Therefore, the masterplan is meant as the last step of the construction process of the city determined by the historical research of urban plans, facades and buildings plans. Our housing development takes place in residual spaces left free by the bombings of world war II and subsequent demolitions, “to give meaning to the remaining fragments of streets, squares, blocks, houses” and monuments, reulting from the layering through history, “to rebuild their integrity and so not to reduce the city to a collection of fragments stored as objects in a museum”3. Infact, the disposition will to continue the complexity of the urban space already existing to improve its strengths, uses, and sights. Consequently to morphological considerations upon the urban texture, the two typologies adopted are the town house - both single and multiple-family - and the multi-storey house block with public functions on the street level. Flats and houses were designed in a variety of sizes according to the possible inhabitants of the area, and taking into considerations the multiple needs regarding living solutions of nowadays metropolitan society. I personally designed houses n. 4 and n. 6, and apartament building n. 2. Plans and sections of house n. 6 were drawn at a scale of 1:20 and designed following energy saving strategies and materials. The apartament building structure was designed according to structural evaluations.  

1. Hans Stimann, The Berliner Townhouse - a typological experiment, introduction to the italian edition by M. Caja e S. Malcovati, Cortina, Milano, 2015 2. ibidem 3. ibidem

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Building Technology Studio

Professor Maria Pilar Vettori, Paola Pleba with G. Negri, V. Fabi, M. Gramellini, P. Raffaglio, A. Manfredini

4th semester, one group work 1 analises, 1 project mark: 30/30 with honour

A student residence was design up to a scale of 1:50, 1:20 and 1:10. All drawing made with Autodesk Autocad.

Realized with S. Sciarpa

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design exercise for a temporary pavillion at the Serpentine Gallery, London with the theme “la casa dell’uomo” (”the men’s house). 3rd semester; elements of typology, prof. Andrea di Franco.                          mark: 30/30.

group work with G. Schiesaro, P. Sangalli, R. Scarvaci.

We interpreted the men’s house as a spiritual place.

above: rendered perspective section.  

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Architectural design studio 1

Professor Lorenzo degli Esposti, G. Marinoni, N. Cattaneo with D. Zerbi, M. Petronio, D. Galletta, D. Borsa, T. Menunni, P. Servalli

1st and 2nd semester, one individual work, one group work 2 analises, 2 project mark: 30/30 with honour

The laboratory, led by Lorenzo degli Esposti, aimed the acquisition of the basic theoretical, analitical and operational knowledge needed to face an architectural project so as to control spacial and volumetric qualities with means as measure, proportion and scale. The studio consisted in two periods, one individual one in a group, both made of a close reading and a project.

The first analisis implied the hand redraw of a villa by Le Corbusier and the reading of its tracés régulateurs. Consequently it was conducted an exercise of composition of a Villa in the woods based on the nine-square grid problem, developed in the 50s at the Texas University School of Architecture by R. Slutzky, J. Hejduk, C. Rowe and L. Hirsche. The instrument were given by the publication una lezione sul disegno by Franco Purini, that collects his thirty compositional operations drawing originally showed as how to act indise architecture at the Academy of Brera in Milan in 1993. The project I developed is a two storey, single-family house. The overall volume design refers to the operation to list, so as to devide the different spaces of the house placing them into different volumes around a courtyard according to their main function.

In the second semester it was required to design a multiporpouse building mainly dedicated to residences after morphological and formal considerations on the site, that being on the Beruto’s Milan build between the end of 19th century and the 1950s. The intervention lays at the border of a public park between a compact courtyard block texture and a linear buildings development of the 50s. It then looks for the appropriate balance between trasgression and conformism with both of them. The architectural body completes an unfinished corner block including the existing building, recalling its tripartited system, both horizontally and vertically, in volumetric implant and facades. Its ideal reiteration was inspired by Franco Purini’s “the series anf the paradigm”. The building hosts public and commercial spaces on the ground level, one floor of offices and four of residences, three structured as duplexes around a central corridor and one as penthouses. The overall design refers to the “syntactic architecture” of the modern movement mainly in Milan

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Ifo Refugee Camp

november 2017; best drawing of the year, Everyday Utopia, Aarhus School of Architecture.

Drawin realized together with G. Schiesaro for the 2017 best drawing of the year competition held by the Aarhus School of Architecture with the title everyday utopia. It represents Ifo, a refugee camp funded in 1991 in Kenya, actually part of the  “metropolitan area” of Dadaab together with Ifo 2, Hagadera, Dagahaley and Kambios. We asked ourselves how modern characters as democracy, egalitarianism, and functionality do express in an urban planning (that of the UNHCR) and applies in a new town founded due to a humanitarian emergency and with mostly temporary conceiving. It is a preliminary urban analysis and it is the outcome of an interrogation about the functioning of a city, of its collective and private activities and their spatial arrangement according to public regulation and spontaneous initiatives of the inhabitants. The map of the city and its texture is reported inside a system of measurement to make explicit distances and catchment areas. Public and private construction are distinguished.

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sleeping competition_alternative designs for hotels

spring 2016; organiser: non architecture competitions with G. Schiesaro, A. Sertorelli, R. Scarvaci listed among the 50 finalists, published in the nonarchitecture publications_1_Sleeping; 2016

This is a design concept elaborated with G. Schiesaro, A. Sertorelli and R. Scarvaci for the first Non Architecture competition with the theme: Sleeping. alternative designs for hotels. A reflection about the essential services provided by hotels led us to discuss about the concept of sleeping. In our three panels, we proposed a hotel equally diffused around the globe. The sleeping facilities, represented by a door, are accessible to everyone equally and indistinctly and they elevate the sleeping to an inalienable right – so not related to property.

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err_004 

October 2016;  best drawing of the year, Habitation (digital drawign competition), Aarhus School of Architecture.

realised with G. Schiesaro.  published by Archisketchbook and The Architectural Review Folio. 

It is a glithced 3D Rhinoceros model composed together with screens from datamoshed videos; 48x48 cm.

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