Residential building | Ottavio Di Blasi

The project aim is constructing accordingly with the notable building density (5 cubic metres/square metre) allowed by the urban development scheme, while keeping the construction light, uncumbered and pleasant to live in. The original plan to construct one single complex was modified into two separated buildings, designed to reduce the overall structural impact and focus on its vertical development. The idea was to place the buildings between two aluminium “skins”, forming a transition layer between the inhabitable structures and the outside environment. These sheets terminate at the facade in two acute angles about 40 metres high, projecting out over the entrance side to make the building’s side facades more legible, like indipendent structural features. The presence of mobile panels breaks down with the conventional pattern of planes and windows, and lets the aluminium features to be seen as large unitary sheets of metal. The facade design allows a completely free internal structural layout, without worrying about the building’s outside form. The panels are made of perforated sheets of metal, which are highly transparent for people looking out from inside, but stop people from seeing in form outside. This ensures greater privacy for the balconies and terraces, and also solves the problem of the blind curtain walls, which are turned into an authentic ventilated facade, with notable energy and building benefits. The space between the two buildings is filled by stairways designed to provide as much transparency as possible. A system of prefabricated ramps was designed to this end, which, thanks to the perfecting of their sectional form, allows their thickness and hence visual impact to be reduced to a minimum. The stairways’ sequence forms an authentical vertical reticular beam, capable to provide transversal resistance in case of seismic events.