Bragarina social housing

Atelier XYZ

• 建築家

DAP studio's project in the Via Bragarina area in La Spezia is developed within the integrated program Fondo Sociale Liguria for the commissioning of DeaCapital spa. It realizes 61 apartments in a complex formed by two building bodies that well translate through architecture the Fund's main lines of action: to give centrality to the social dimension of living, to realize quality housing solutions and to trigger a redevelopment action, both building and urban planning, extended to a heterogeneous urban system in a once peripheral area that is gradually gaining value.

The Bragarina Social Housing, developed together with Progetec snc, consists of an in-line, smaller building that follows the street's course and connects with the pre-existing buildings and three volumes connected by exposed structural elements that face the street with an open courtyard.
The street front, characterized by alternating solids and voids (the square, the courtyard), finds a unified design through a tree-lined pathway that, aligned with the building fronts, acts as a trait d'union between the different parts of the master plan.

The complex fits into a fabric characterized by garden cottages, tenement buildings, residential blocks, and warehouses along nearby railroad tracks working on public and private. Starting at street level and rising toward the rooftops, the design modulates the distribution and use of spaces to create integration and permeability with the neighborhood through porches and openings and, on the upper floors, more private spaces for use by the inhabitants. The buildings, despite their typological differentiation, find unity in architectural language. The elevations denounce the structural elements (the pillars and floors) and by antithesis the infill elements. Within the structural mesh are inserted like boxes the living spaces, staggered on each floor to obtain loggias: in this way each apartment can enjoy a private outdoor space.
Commercial activities on the ground floor, also facing the neighborhood, are housed within glazed volumes in an ensemble without fences that highlight the permeability of the lot. Pedestrian pathways and new landscaping serve an expanded user base that is reflected in white metal ceilings.

The upper floors house shared areas for work, study, and leisure, such as the lemon house, vegetable gardens, a solarium, a party room, and communal activities, which blend fluidly with the relevant open spaces.
The apartments, on the other hand, offer quality through one-bedroom, two-bedroom, three-bedroom and four-bedroom apartments, accessible by agreement, all served by loggias and balconies that, also working with color, enliven facades characterized by alternating solids and voids, effectively unified by clean, warm and elegant architecture.