Space to Culture
YAC - Young Architects Competitions
The aim of the competition it's to transform the former 15.000 sqm of a factory building into a lively space for culture, arts and public relationship. A wide and versatile open space is meant to provide local citizens and tourists a modern cultural / leisure time activities center.
The core of this transformation shall focus on temporality and spatial custom-tailoring, providing users a flexible system made with dynamic / modular / equipped spaces.
The building was designed in the 70's by the Italian architect Pier Luigi Cervellati and it's located in Quarto San Giovanni, Bologna (Italy).
The project is the result of three different design level: the interventions on the existing building, the permanent project and the reversible project.
Interventions on the existing building
The project starts from a critical review of the building.
The interventions on the existing building come from a double need: create a space free and flexible as much as possible and recreate a new physical/ visual connection between the new internal activities and the external spaces (without distorting the original building, but at the same time strong enough to denounce the functional change).
So the project provides for the elimination of all the non-structural partitions, the substitution of the mirror glass facades and the creation of several double heights to facilitate the perception of the new environments.
For economical reasons all the existing vertical cores (staircase and elevators) and the services blocks (toilets and technical spaces) are maintained, and their location become the first suggestion to lay out the new functions.
Permanent project
Inside the wide free space that is created, permanent elements are introduced. They have a double meaning: functional and communicative.
They become the entrances and re-display the new functions contained by the building (adding new vertical/horizontal connections combined with the existing one). Due to the fact that we are designing the transformation of an existing building, the theme of the entrance/ access/ gateway become very important and needs to pop out; it represents and redefines the transition between the inside and the outside, between public, semi-public and private spaces.
The permanent projects are characterized by a material and a bright color deliberately selected in contrast to the existing building and they are shaped in order to be evident and attractive for the potential users.
The grafted blocks become accesses, vertical connections and public services related to the new functions provided inside the industrial buildings.
Reversible project
On the inside the space layout is re-designed through prefabricated modules that allow easy and quick assembly /disassembly process, and that leave a fluid and continuous space in between them, the relationship-wise space.
They facilitate maximum scope depending on specific needs: thus the reversible project is configured as partitions, either small living units or wide polifunctional rooms, all made by the same module. The versatility of the design allows the creation of flexible spaces according to the requirements and the infinite possible solutions achieved with the prefabricated modules, provide to the project a significant economic sustainability.
