The competition for the ex Uccellis area (Udine) regarded the design of a new residential building of 100 units, characterized by a high-density housing, that was meant to be put on the local and restricted market.
The idea was to design a place starting from the desires and needs of the people. The design process begun with the definition of who was possibly going to inhabit the place. What were the peculiar aspects of the peoples' lives, including their families and their homes. The potential Clients that were identified were people who desired to live in the city, without the problems related to city centers but with the comforts of suburbs and countrysides. Those were people who were in searching of the VILLAGE IN THE CITY, who desired to go to a particular place and to belong to a community. They searched for the easiness in relating with other people and in moving across the streets, which are peculiar to the city center, but, at the same time, they wanted new contemporary houses, that had to be sustainable, environmental-friendly and equipped with all the modern comforts that historic buildings lack of. To be able to access this typology of Clients, the project had to offer 100% the requested qualities and to provide the place with a new IDENTITY.
We wanted to create a place connected to the identity of the city centre but in a complete different way: the place was surrounded by nature and suspended between trees.
The concept consisted of a combination of NESTS for a new community characterized by: an identity, a center, views, nature, independence, privacy, security, quality of relationships, connections with the green system of the city center, accessibility, private parking places, sustainability and technology, attention to the environment and to the operating expenses, space flexibility, possibility to choose between 35 solutions that could be aggregated, customized and "tailored" on every level.
San Giacomo square, the most representative square of Udine, was kept as a reference for the new residences, thanks to its ideal qualities, dimensions and proportions. The scheme of the square was transformed, opened up towards the sun, connected and oriented to the views and, most of all, raised by six meters from the ground, to be able to enjoy all the positive characteristics of the surroundings and to forget the negative ones. The new paradigm was to live above the ground and to feel to belong to the city centre; all the accesses and open spaces were connected in a fluid way and all of them referred to the great birch park that constituted the center of the new settlement. The park continued under the buildings of the great porch and it constituted a meeting place, a loggia, exposed to the ground floor that was completely free and green. The buildings were transformed in contemporary residential buildings, with a high degree of flexibility and customization to satisfy the needs of everyone. They were enriched by great terraces, covered loggias and bioclimatic greenhouses, to offer a good quality that only the open private spaces, exposed to a great birch park, with panoramic views for everyone, could guarantee to a city house.
The result was the creation of a new PLACE, that had an IDENTITY strictly related to the historic center of the city of Udine, with a richness of comforts typical of the living in countryside. VinCi, a new VILLAGE IN THE CITY.
