Library for the School of Architecture of La Sapienza, Rome (Italy)
The site of the School of Architecture of the University of La Sapienza is a very natural place. Located near Villa Borghese, in the Giulia Valley, the site has beautiful views of the city.The site of the project has a quite important difference in height, and the School is a classical building.
As Rome is a very volumetric city, I have tried to repeat the play of boxes and volumes. In Rome, ruins, palaces, monuments emerge from the terrain. Using the inclination of the site, my first purpose is to reproduce the volumes of a typical roman hill. The program of the project includes a student's library, a cafeteria, an auditorium and an administrative area. I separate each use in a different building, beiang the administrative building the back of the projects, and the three other uses the three main buildings, three boxes made of glass and steel. The space between the four pieces turns into the new public space of the School.
Being the library the main use, light turns into the generating element of the materiality of the volumes. These volumes blur when their sides become sheets of glass, so we arrive to the boxesof light that are the main character of the project. Surrounding the three boxes, there is a metallic mesh that unifies the project, and that permits the filter of light.
The administrative building separates the new intervention and the preexisting buildings, and at the same time is the element of transition and communication between new and old. It is a much more tectonic building, nearly an extension from a contention wall.
This project pretends to create a new site. The library, cafeteria and auditorium will be very useful for the students of the School, and the creation of more and better adapted public spaces will help the students to enjoy their new and recuperated space.
Landscape project in Unige, Geneva (Switzerland).
The site of the school of Architecture of the University of Geneva is a very natural place. Centurial trees and extensive grounds form the environment of the School. New constructions are surrounding this site, so new necessities are being created. An elementary school is being constructed in the site too, andthe fields are now used as a way down to the transport infrastructure of the city, and as a children's play garden.
The landscape project tries to adapt the site ti its new uses, maintening the natural essence of the place, and protecting the environment. A new pedestrian paths system communicates the different places of the site, and these paths become the new axis of the grounds. The first of them goes from the transport stop to the new residential constructions on the top of the hill. A small swimming pool, a little square and some greads appear during the way up. The second path communicate the first one with the new school, so the acces becomes clear and easy. The third one communicates the first two with a new square, that represents the nucleus of the site.
Water is present in all the new spaces, as the common material that unifies the whole intervention. The permeability of the materials is fondamental in the project, because one of the aims is to reuse the rain water.
This project pretends the creation of more and better adapted public spaces in a very natural site. That's why a politic of small intervention in the nature is very important. The use of non-contaminated materials and the search of a pollution-free environment is the key of the project.
