Project

Casa dell'amicizia

Year

2013

Course

Interior Design Lab

Professors

Letizia Caruzzo

Location

Milan, Italy

The project is a student university residence in a neighborhood in the north of Milan, near one of the seven campus of Politecnico di Milano, Bovisa campus.The idea is to transform an abandoned building along Durando street in accomodations for students with guesthouses. The model of the new project is the “pavillon” of university cities, where the definition of the individual room settle in search of social life places for study, cultural and artistic activities: common places that extend from inside to outside drawing gardens, bleachers, natural platforms. The building takes inspiration from various architects’ poetics, such as those of Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer, Herzog&DeMeuron.

The building has three different entranceS: the main at level - 1.85 m, one at level zero and one at level +1.30 m. The difference in height is solved thanks to a long ramp starting at the lower level, a promenade architecturale, from which you can see the glazed wall of the library, which continues outsides, the big helicoidal staircase at the bottom and admire the lower floor as student exhibition space.

Upstairs you can find study areas behind glass walls facing north and east, common areas in the middle and student accomodations subdivided in two typologies: simplex and duplex with their own terraces. The former, a narrow and deep room with unit bath and small kitchen, takes inspiration from Le Corbusier’s de La Tourette convent. The further, a flat on two floor with double high living room and two terraces, taking LC’s Unité d’habitation in Marseilles as model.

On the roof terrace three guest houses prototypes are experimented. The residential prototype is a single small parabolic shell of concrete, broken only by the entrance on one side. The southern facade is characterized by a full-height glazing for the bright living space and by a small balcony for the bedroom.The service spaces (kitchen, bathroom, closet and sofa) are composed in a block which correspond outside to a vertical wall with three windows in the north. This block carries an upper floor achievable with a small wooden stair in the back of the house.