The Green Quake Centre, the new community centre that will be built in the city of Acquasanta Terme is among the first projects of particular strategic and functional importance that will sanction the rebirth and reconstruction of the communities hit by the 2016 earthquake.
A building of necessity that, although in its design the typical architectural quirks were limited to a minimum by decreeing an external formal simplification, was certainly designed to introduce itself into the Acquasanta scenario with determination and respect for the naturalistic and historical/artistic context of the area subject to intervention.
The new Green Quake Centre has a linear, compact and visually mimetic shape compared to the context in which it stands, seeking a biophilic contact with the environment.
The shape wants to evoke in a metaphorically architectural way, the telluric movement of a strip of land that from its own movement, would generate usable architectural spaces underneath it.
The building, in addition to seeking perfect integration with the environment, identifies a symbolic link with the destructive events of the 2016 earthquake, iconic connections that can restore hope to a community that is able to recognize the destructive seismic force also as an opportunity for growth and rebirth.
A building designed not to appear and be looked at, a non-egoistic building, but designed not to affect the context in which it stands.
As for the interior, the Green Quake Centre houses a large multimedia room, which would also serve as a hall for religious services, a comfortable refectory, a bar, three rooms for catechism, an office, as well as in the eastern part of the complex, a sector of about one hundred square meters reserved exclusively for the new headquarters of the local green cross.
The building, in addition to having a respectful and mimetic visual layout, is designed to be an architectural excellence in terms of environmental sustainability.
In addition to the typical technologies designed for sustainable use of the complex, such as the recovery and reuse of rainwater for the maintenance of the greenery of the surrounding park, the installation of a photovoltaic system with an autonomous storage system, and the design of the roofing slopes for a perfect study of the radiation of the external envelope; the project also hosts latest-generation extensive green modules.
The pre-vegetated Sedum system designed for the roofing ensures a camouflaged visual impact, conceiving a sort of green carpet that generates, together with the corten finishes, a visual continuity with the adjacent land, ensuring a very high thermal insulating capacity as well as a characteristic absorption of rainwater by the pre-vegetated modules, which would avoid the surrounding land the hard task of draining any heavy rainfall, typical of the summer periods.
Finally, the pre-vegetated Sedum, thanks also to its ability to accumulate atmospheric water, allows for very low maintenance, being not only self-watering but also self-leveling.
