The Transformation of the Great Decommissioned Farini Railroad …
199
purely functional pathways, while the places for housing, once more public as they
were in the old city, include parks and gardens.
Every unit includes three types of housing: open courtyard housing, aligned housing, and tall housing that organize different places, each with its own character. The
more enclosed and intimate C-shaped courtyards close to the longitudinal streets
that run through the settlement and partially border the space inside the block are
four-storey high and defined by aligned buildings along the streets and two transversal buildings of the same height. The other open courtyards are wider and typically
feature a relation between different buildings—the street-facing aligned building, the
tall perpendicular house that defines its measure, and a service building on the third
side. The common facilities, also located within the blocks, are mainly built along
the two longitudinal streets that run through the entire settlement (Fig. 3).
At a larger scale, the tall houses establish a more expansive landscape: they interact
between each other at a distance within each block, are conceived in the general plan
of the new settlement, and develop a relationship with the towers planned in the front
square of the system as new subjects in the comprehensive design of a city made
of separate and hopefully recognizable elements, that in turn is part of the Lombard
landscape at a broader scale.
4 The Second Project, 2012. Second Variation 4
The variation on the initial plan takes the architecture of the buildings as crucial to
the composition as a whole. A block that can be walked through and enjoyed by the
community, with no streets open to vehicles, onto which the apartments, facilities,
and towers all look. The block is delimited by five-storey buildings where the loggialiving rooms of iron and glass look onto the park in the middle of the block. Sleeping
areas and facilities of the apartments look onto tree-lined streets while the loggialiving room becomes the new vantage point to observe the city immersed in nature,
the central hub of the home, like the loggia of Gardella’s Casa al Parco, which looks
straight out onto the Sempione Park almost as though to assert exclusive rights to its
use.
Towards the city, the walls of the bedrooms, one level higher, constitute the compact, linear street frontage delimiting the block lengthwise. The apartment buildings
are interrupted only at points corresponding to the towers inside the block, creating
small squares that differ in each case, and provide lateral access to the residential
block as well as a path running all the way through it.
The towers are based on the same principle as the apartment buildings, with a
distinction in terms of construction and outlay between the sleeping and living areas.
4 See Footnote 1. Design Group, Tomaso Monestiroli with Claudia Tinazzi, Federica Cattaneo.
199
purely functional pathways, while the places for housing, once more public as they
were in the old city, include parks and gardens.
Every unit includes three types of housing: open courtyard housing, aligned housing, and tall housing that organize different places, each with its own character. The
more enclosed and intimate C-shaped courtyards close to the longitudinal streets
that run through the settlement and partially border the space inside the block are
four-storey high and defined by aligned buildings along the streets and two transversal buildings of the same height. The other open courtyards are wider and typically
feature a relation between different buildings—the street-facing aligned building, the
tall perpendicular house that defines its measure, and a service building on the third
side. The common facilities, also located within the blocks, are mainly built along
the two longitudinal streets that run through the entire settlement (Fig. 3).
At a larger scale, the tall houses establish a more expansive landscape: they interact
between each other at a distance within each block, are conceived in the general plan
of the new settlement, and develop a relationship with the towers planned in the front
square of the system as new subjects in the comprehensive design of a city made
of separate and hopefully recognizable elements, that in turn is part of the Lombard
landscape at a broader scale.
4 The Second Project, 2012. Second Variation 4
The variation on the initial plan takes the architecture of the buildings as crucial to
the composition as a whole. A block that can be walked through and enjoyed by the
community, with no streets open to vehicles, onto which the apartments, facilities,
and towers all look. The block is delimited by five-storey buildings where the loggialiving rooms of iron and glass look onto the park in the middle of the block. Sleeping
areas and facilities of the apartments look onto tree-lined streets while the loggialiving room becomes the new vantage point to observe the city immersed in nature,
the central hub of the home, like the loggia of Gardella’s Casa al Parco, which looks
straight out onto the Sempione Park almost as though to assert exclusive rights to its
use.
Towards the city, the walls of the bedrooms, one level higher, constitute the compact, linear street frontage delimiting the block lengthwise. The apartment buildings
are interrupted only at points corresponding to the towers inside the block, creating
small squares that differ in each case, and provide lateral access to the residential
block as well as a path running all the way through it.
The towers are based on the same principle as the apartment buildings, with a
distinction in terms of construction and outlay between the sleeping and living areas.
4 See Footnote 1. Design Group, Tomaso Monestiroli with Claudia Tinazzi, Federica Cattaneo.