For the Fiera Milano, Zaha Hadid Architects’ tower serves a portal, or gate into the Fiera along Viale Scarampo and Via Bartolomeo. The external skin of the tower is a system of sun-deflecting louvers flanked by a double layer of glazing, Furthermore, the surface of the glazing has a series of ventilating registers that draw outside air through the cavity of the exterior system, thus providing a highly energy-efficient environment for the offices behind.
Views and panoramas provided along the height of this office tower move dynamically, sweeping from the Piazza Firenze to the Piazza Giovanni Amendola, while the exterior silhouette clearly demarcates an entry gate into a new, vital Fiera Milano.
More from the Architects:
The high-rise as a building typology has traditionally been treated as a static, fixed strategy; the tower is reduced to a technocratic, engineering ‘solution’ governed by specific economic factors. Architects, in this role, have been left with the spire, exterior shell or, perhaps more significantly, the lobby interior. For the Fiera Milano, Zaha Hadid Architects have investigated the urban location of the tower as a portal, or gate into the Fiera along Viale Scarampo and Via Bartolomeo. Derivations of the passagio from the site into this gate gives shape to a certain torsion or vortex, and it is this movement, this dynamism that we are investigating.
Moving from the ground datum of the Piazza Porta Fiera, the retail base of the tower slowly rises and twists, in provision of a pedestrian ramp, to a bifurcation along its length servicing a galleria/promenade. This line of torsion continues to the tower that releases its horizontal energy into a vertical, spiraling vector from the base to its crown that finally aligns with the snaking forms of the housing across the river.
Congruent with this movement, the structure of the tower is conceived as a stack of equivalent, economically efficient floor slabs that incrementally twist about a vertical axis. This incremental twisting is algorithmically controlled so that each floor does not have the same angle, but has a fractional, relational angle to the floors above and below, further developing the dynamism of the tower. All lateral forces are absorbed into a conventional central core, while a radial display of columns support vertical load.
The external skin of the tower is a system of sun-deflecting louvers flanked by a double layer of glazing, Furthermore, the surface of the glazing has a series of ventilating registers that draw outside air through the cavity of the exterior system, thus providing a highly energy-efficient environment for the offices behind.
Finally, the views and panoramas provided along the height of this office tower will also move dynamically, sweeping from the Piazza Firenze to the Piazza Giovanni Amendola, while the exterior silhouette clearly demarcates an entry gate into a new, vital Fiera Milano.
RESIDENTIAL COMPLEX
The Residential plot is composed by 7 linear buildings set along a continuous path around two land areas: Rc1, including buildings C1- C2-C3 and Rc2 with buildings C4-C5-C6-C7. The land areas are divided by a strip of public park.
The buildings can accommodate up to 230 luxury apartments, with common facilities. The skyline of the residential complex is defined and characterized by a sinuous fluid line. The roof outline raises continuously from building to building, starting from 5-storey C2 building facing Piazza Giulio Cesare it reaches its maximum height at building C6 13th floor, thus ideally setting a unified and unique skyline.
Great care has been given to site and buildings orientation, taking into account environmental and comfort requirements so that most apartments face south-east and at the same time allocate the best views from the terraces, towards the city or the public park.
The façades design involves continuity and fluidity: the volumetric envelope of the buildings is defined by a curvilinear movement of balconies and terraces, opening up into a rich variety of private spaces, both interior and exterior, echoing the landscape below.
The façade materials - fiber concrete panels and natural wood panels - emphasize this complex volumetric movement and at the same time give a private and “domestic” quality to the interior of the residential courtyard.
At ground level, the double-height lobbies are flooded with light by large openings stretching from floor to ceiling, designed to confer strong visual continuity with the park.
Although great consideration has been given to the ground floor design and morphology, the project is formally defined mainly by the roof profile and the intense urban horizon it generates. This strategy was determined by the awareness of forthcoming towers looking upon the residential roofs and by the strong will to engender, within the inner courtyard, a completely new residential landscape, reassuring yet dynamic.
