Auctioneer: CDP Investimenti
Location: Roma
Competition: 2015
Architectural design: Gregotti Associati e Marco Contini
Collaborators: Matteo Zaccarelli, Matteo Mascia
Type of intervention: new construction
Functional characteristics: science museum, residences and commercial activities, hotel
Area: 72.000 mq
What we propose with our architectural solution tries to represent the need, not only in this specific case, of a new reasonable clarity of simplicity and a lasting solution.
Simplicity is neither aesthetic nor practical simplification: architecture is not simple, it can only become painstakingly simple without losing its deep and necessary thickness. Simplicity is enduring but not immobile, it must be the collective foundation of ever new balances.
These principles are also expressed in the composition of the design team which guarantees effective integrated control in the various phases of the project for concrete experiences.
All this is measured above all with the immediately adjacent contextual conditions of historically recent and sometimes complicated construction.
Then there are the lasting settlement traces of the triangular layout, especially of the axis between via Guido Reni up to the Tiber and even beyond the orthogonal meeting with Viale Vignola to ideally regulate the great exceptions of the Flaminio stadium, of the historic building of Nervi up to the complex of the three recent theatrical rooms.
More closely, the complex simplicity of our proposal is made up of four different building elements interconnected.
The first consists of the complex dedicated to science, the most compactly monumental which opens onto a tree-lined pedestrian square of 3,000 square meters, an elongated rectangle placed in correspondence, beyond Via Guido Reni, with the lateral space of entrance to the MAXXI museum.
The science complex is supposedly made up of different elements (spaces for exhibitions, research, teaching, etc. with the related equipment) and is therefore conceived as a block of three floors, with a vast unit space of 3,600 m2 on the ground floor and with four full-height voids for lighting from above.
From the square in front, the museum moves the axis that connects the two large tree-lined squares (spaces primarily serving the inhabitants but open to the public) around which the commercial activities are located on the ground floor and services (6,500 sq m), on the three upper floors the residence (22,000 sq m) and a 6,000 sq m hotel in the second square.
The entrance to each square is underlined by two further residence floors.
A pedestrian path crosses the step of the first square and diagonally underpasses, on both sides of the hotel, the second.
The third complex includes 13,000 square meters of residence on four floors of which 6,000 are subsidized residences that we have voluntarily combined with the other residences in the objective of social mixing.
Here too in the centre there is a tree-lined public square, open towards the large green space next to it.
The precision and simplicity of this system will allow not only a great functional flexibility of homes, commerce and services, but also a vast possibility of architectural variations while keeping the overall urban shape unchanged.
The whole system is equipped with underground car parks for 21,500 square meters distributed on one floor to avoid any archaeological difficulties as well as approximately 2,000 square meters of surface road parking, for a set of around 1,000 parking spaces.
For each building block, the objective of the project is to achieve the passive energy standard through the maximum exploitation of the passive energy behaviour of the building envelopes and with efficient plant solutions, easy to manage and maintain.
The theme of energy efficiency will be inserted within a broader concept of sustainability that will take the LEED NCv2009 ITALY protocol as its main and guiding framework.
The entire neighbourhood will follow a specific LEED “Neighborhood Development” certification: issues such as efficiency in the use of water, waste management, choice of materials, technological innovation, external environmental quality and interior of buildings.
Vittorio Gregotti
