SEA – the company that runs Italian Airports – launched a 2 phases competition for the ‘new gate’ of the Airport of Malpensa. The brief, addressed to teams composed by architects and artists, defined a site between terminal and train station, a budget and some programmatic ambitions. The ‘Gate’ had to be conceived both as transit and pause space, function as infrastructure, be perceived as a landmark and behave as an exhibition space. Together with Massimo Bartolini and VudafieriSaverino we developed our (losing) proposal…

Premise

Novalis noted that “The curve is the triumph of the freedom on the rule”, and Oscar Niemeyer keeps on explaining: “I am attracted by the free and sensual curve.The curve I encounter in the mountains and in the rivers of my Country, in the clouds of the sky, in the waves of the ocean, in the body of the favourite woman. The universe is made of curves, the curved universe of Einstein.”

A gate for Milan

Our proposal is a permeable and autonomous space, defined and circumscribed by a curve with constant radius: a circle. The curve is strong in this context because is completely unusual among the surrounding infrastructures. The curve introduces a dynamic and relaxing ‘field strength’ that becomes the focus of its environment. The ‘perfect’ shape of the circle gains another significance at the architectural scale. The 2-dimensional perimeter carved on the territory is extruded into the flat volume of a 44 m wide and 5 m tall cylinder. The interior become organized space and, therefore, architecture: a circular room with a 30 m diameter flanked by two curved corridors that meet were the space opens to the terminal on one side an to the train station on the other.

Revolving door

This circular space is occupied by a revolving door tied to a structural pillar and constituted by 5 wings, each wing is 14 m long and features few colored glass panels. The revolving door is the metaphor of a transition, and of the world. It’s an open boundary and recalls the image of hotels, theaters, public spaces, meetings and travels… but it’s also the alias of a compass tracing a profile on a sheet of paper, of a radar scanning the sky and monitoring the airplanes traffic.

Fast curves

The curved corridors around the central room work – paradoxically – as fast connections. The outer boundary is composed by a bearing structure combined with colored glass panels. A screen saver is constantly projected onto the boundary of the central room: landscapes, movies, fragments and memories of Milan and the Milanese territory. The shadows of the passengers melt in this images as in a magic lantern.

5:PM

When the mechanical movement of the revolving door stops, 5 rooms materialize and become available spaces for art exhibitions, the ‘kaleidoscope-like’ space become background, the transit turns into pause. 5:PM is the name of our proposal for the ‘New Gate’ of Milan, it’s a revolving door with 5 wings, it’s the time when labor ends a leisure starts, it’s when computers are shut down and people goes out, it’s the right time for departures… and arrivals.

Plan (click to open, then right-click to zoom)

Competition panel (1.272MB)

The Competition Team

Massimo Bartolini
Lorenzo Bini
Claudia Brunelli
Roberta Rizzi

On the 19^th of November the five teams that will compete for the 2^nd phase of the Architecture Competition for the new Piazza G. Verdi in La Spezia (Italy) were announced. studiometrico and artist Massimo Bartolini had developed a design proposal that was not short-listed by the Jury…

The Project

The competition challenge to organize a new urban square without giving up cars has been undertaken with a visionary proposal that consisted in the realization of a 200 m long infrastructural building able to manage traffic in a flexible way and to become a powerful and iconic element for the city. The superimposition of a new square on the existing one on ground level would have provoked – in the vision of the designers – a variety of uses and situations.

aerial view of the new square

the lower square

the upper square

the new square

the new building

The Competition Panel

download pdf [3.120 KB]

The Competition Team

Artist
Massimo Bartolini

studiometrico

Lorenzo Bini
Francesca Murialdo

Erica Borsa
Claudia Brunelli
Corinne Gallotti
Roberta Rizzi

Since 2005 we have been working and posting on this project. Once it was completed, our clients announced they were not interested in publishing on magazines and expressed big concern about their privacy. The gardens we designed and the farmhouse (refurbished by Vudafieri Saverino Partners) host numerous artworks from the collection of the owners, so we were asked to maintain our absolute discretion.
We understood and even learned to appreciate this attitude… In the end it dismissed us from those usual efforts to document and photograph properly our work.
Later we realized that a project – to a certain extent – always belongs to the designer and decided that, as long as we wouldn’t have crossed ‘that boundary’, we could still be free to disclose our work. So we made an attempt…

1. Rammed earth

Taking inspiration from the nearby mountain pathways we used rammed earth to pave two long stripes that provide occasional access to cars and tractors around the house.

2. Larch wood

The main access to the house is a small area paved with larch wood bricks of standard size laid directly on the soil according to a simple geometrical pattern.

Larch wood planks were used for this small deck connected with the kitchen of the guest house.

To retain the slightly sloping terrain with steps and to define edges between different areas we used thicker larch wood planks and wooden pegs.

3. Resin-bound gravel

The road that leads from the entrance to the underground garage was paved with a layer of resin-bound gravel adapt to endure the cold winters of the area.

4. Porphyry stones

An area adjacent to the house and the garage has been conceived as a small piazza and paved with local porphyry stones laid according to the tradition by expert hands.

5. Reinforced soil

We borrowed this system of reinforcing the soil on the sloping edges of highways and railways to mould the terrain and define a small living area near the house.

6. Weathering steel

Numerous elements like kerbs, steps, poles and profiles have been realized in weathering steel to match the color and the feel of other natural materials.

The main gate to the property has been designed as a solid and massive element that provides privacy and embeds the entry phone, the counter and the gas meters.

7. Steel wire mesh

To blend into the surrounding landscape of apple tree rows, the boundary fences of the property have been realized in steel wire mesh and concrete poles.

Few vegetable gardens have been inserted into the terrain and enclosed, according to the local tradition, with rusted hexagonal wire mesh and T profile vertical elements.

A Lace Fence Pergola has been designed by Joep Verhoeven from  Demakersvan, built in Bangalore, transported on site and previously described here.

8. Exposed concrete

To host an artwork by Danish artist Jeppe Hein we have built a concrete pavillion with a concrete door that provides access to a supporting engine room.

9. Chestnut wood

Together with the wise local peasant we designed a chestnut wood Pergola to support a beautiful old vine that survived the site works and flanks the main entrance to the house.

When the Pergola was completed, the eperienced team could undertake the challenge to design Green Monsters…

Previous posts about this project:

Gardens between apple trees

Gardens between apple trees – 2

Gardens between apple trees – 3

How to ‘build’ Green Monsters