Italian architects studio wok shared with us their social housing project for Milan, which received an honorable mention in the “AAAarchitetti cercasi 2010″. More images and architect’s description after the break.
This project aims to create a new place with a strong identity by giving it a strong urban character in a place morphologically dispersed. Although the new facility is designed as a strong element of identity in the urban landscape. at the same time, there is the desire to create strong links with the environment and new visual and functional connections with it. The surrounding city is read as a network of relationships and the new settlement wants to be an important hub of this system.
The open space plays a decisive role and is the connective tissue between the different places and the different functions that build the project. The ground floors of the buildings build spatial, visual and functional relations with the context.: they are interrupted to allow the court to be as permeable as possible to intercept the flows and paths that link the different collective functions.
The concept of the project is the study of a strategic link between public and private spaces and there is a strong attention paid to the relationship between public, private and common dimensions: the project wants to recreate the concept of “community-building”.
All of the apartments have two views onto open spaces, one external and one into the courtyard. They are also developed along a passing living room that organizes the bedroom area and services. The apartments have a filter zone that performs a dual function: it provides protection and privacy with respect to the communal balcony and, at the same time, gives value and space for a chance encounter between neighbors.
A single structural rhythm orders the types of apartments that become more flexible and can easily be combined with each other. The different types are distributed unevenly ensuring that social “mixitè” which recreates the typical wealth of relations of a community and, in general, of a society.
Architects: studio wok Location: Milan, Italy Project Team: Marcello Bondavalli, Nicola Brenna, Carlo Alberto Tagliabue Collaborators: Antonio Manzeni, Serena Di Giuliano, Valentina De Palo, Alessandro Cavarretta Project Area: 18,000 sqm Project Year: 2010 Photographs: Courtesy of StudioWOK
