The new office complex is located in the north-west of Milan, on the city street-boulevard Certosa, leading from the Sforzesco castle to the old city cemetery Cimitero Maggiore. Now this area, however, is more famous for its proximity to the Fiera exhibition center, in the spring of 2015, supplemented by the world exhibition Expo 2015. So, here, on the way to the Expo, on the trapezoidal section between McDonald's, the Ukrainian consulate and the low hangar of the music hall in 2014 completed construction of the Green Place office complex. It was built by order of the development company Stam Europe and consists of 7300 m2 underground parking and 11,255 m2 useful space intended for "offices and industrial laboratories."
The authors of the project, architects Studio GaS (Goring & Straja Architects), opted for energy efficiency, and the complex received a LEED gold certificate (69 points out of 110 possible). Prior to the platinum version, environmental sustainability was 11 points short. High marks were received in such categories as “environmental sustainability” (22/28), “innovation” (4/6), “water management” (10/11), “materials and resources” (7/13). More details can be found here. It must be said that the design of green buildings is one of the signature features of the GaS studio: Green Place is not the first sustainable building built by these architects in Milan - similar characteristics are also characteristic of the PalAxa designed by them on via Don Sturzo in the Porta Nuova area. Affori Center Milano via Cialdini and Autodesk's via Tortona - the latter certified as LEED Gold Interior.
However, the design process was difficult not only because of the desire for eco-sustainability: right before the start of construction, the customer, dissatisfied with all the previous options, decided to hold a new closed competition - ten days in advance. GaS architects won it by proposing an option that was optimized both spatially compositionally and financially - and, moreover, fit into the sum of the permits and restrictions approved for the previous, rejected project. A situation close to the heart of a Russian architect, isn't it? By the way, the building was built, as they would say in Moscow, “in the regeneration mode” - it replaced a part of the buildings that existed on this site and the architects' website says - attention - as renovation.
So, the resulting building consists of two five-storey buildings, connected by a third - a two-storey lintel intended for laboratories. On the upper floors of two large buildings there are offices, on the ground floor there are industrial premises, and in the planned 500 m2 the showroom has already hosted the Renault Auto Show. In combination with the neighboring buildings, the three buildings form a rather spacious courtyard, which architects and developers are very proud of, considering it a paraphrase of the compact courtyards of this part of Milan. The architecture of the complex is a deliberate intervention of the quarterly planning on the border between the quite urban boulevard Certosa and its immediate environs, motley, low and tending to suburbia. Now the boulevard, I must say, is struggling to resist the onslaught of the non-urban environment: its tram rails are rusted, the red line is interrupted, it barely resists the atmosphere of the outskirts - the new office complex turns out to be almost an outpost of the urbanized environment, reinforcing the feeling of the city on its small patch. The authors call it an introvert complex, emphasizing the seclusion of the courtyard.
However, the architecture of the building as a whole appeals to the "international" post-war modernism: the laconic form is outlined by a white frame - "TV", a lot of glass, a grid of thin supports inside - you can find a lot of Le Corbusier's rules in it. Slightly broken lines of facades and the already mentioned signs of an emphasized urban environment: from a low height to a quarterly layout with a closed courtyard, are an amendment to modern trends.
But the main feature of the building - the glass-concrete facade is supplemented with movable lamellas made of glued bamboo: each of the modules, fixed on a galvanized steel frame, contains six bamboo trunks with a diameter of about 50 mm each. On the western façade, where the area of the lamellas is the most, and on the short south facing the boulevard, the lamellas rotate automatically, depending on the position of the sun and the need for shade. On the eastern, courtyard facade of the same building, the control of the modules is mechanical - they can be turned manually. The lattices in front of the facade of the two-storey building from the side of the courtyard are endowed with the same manual control, only there they are not vertical, but horizontal, and long: each module stretches four meters along the facade.
The maximum shading that sun-protection bamboo slats can provide is 70%: their transparent design does not completely cover the sun, but “crushes” it, cuts it into stripes, creating a lacy, loose shadow. However, the beautiful striped shadows in the photographs are difficult to recognize as a perfect advantage: the streaks of light will still shine in the eyes, so the lamellas do not exclude the fact that internal blinds will appear in the building - but their chaotic pile-up will not be too visible from the outside, which is already a plus.
In the Green Place building, architects GaS
for the first time in Italy a system of bamboo lamellas was used, but I must say that the use of gratings, not awnings and capital canopies, for sun protection, is one of the favorite techniques of this bureau. For example, in the Milanese complexes Palazzo della Vetra, Perseo Expo District and Affori Center, they used lattice awnings for the same purpose.
The courtyard is the private space of tenants, it can be accessed from the street through two low arches, as well as from each building: one of the functions of the courtyard space is to link the entire complex together. The glass walls of the entrance atriums face here, in whose light, high and solid space, devoid of horizontal partitions, plastic white volumes of stairs are placed - another pride of architects and another Corbussean (though popular with many modernists) motif.
The courtyard, intended, in addition to the connection between the buildings, of course, for relaxation, communication and parties, is located on the roof of the underground parking (about 7500 m22) and is carefully landscaped. Its entire territory is lined with many identical small rectangles and resembles a game board, where part of the fields is occupied by a pavement of black and white pebbles, the second is occupied by flower beds located at the paving level, the third is tubs with trees, including eucalyptus trees, whose wide borders serve as benches for recreation. The pattern of this mini-garden can be admired not only from the inside, but also from above: from the square-terrace, equipped on the roof of the two-storey building-lintel and also landscaped.
All landscaping - both the courtyard and the roof terrace - is done using ZinCo's Floradrain® FD 40-E technology. The size of the Floradrain element is 40 and a special substrate - soil for green roofs, allows the root systems of shrubs and trees to receive the optimal amount of moisture. And lawns with sedums (Sedum Carpet) - with an already thinner soil layer - are created using the Floradrain® FD 25-E system. According to the documentation, 1,500 m are allocated for landscaping.2.
The roofs of high, five-storey buildings are also not empty: they are occupied by solar panels with a total area of 1200 m2.
The play of glass surfaces, white surfaces and bamboo gratings intensifies with the onset of dusk. Diverse lighting colors the complex, making it even more attractive. It is a pity that, judging by the lattices that tightly surrounded the territory, this beauty is available only for the employees of the tenant companies, and not for all the townspeople.
And finally - a video about the complex with pleasant music:
One of the GaS executives, architect Andre Strya, talks about the Green Place building:
Material provided by the company "Tsinko RUS"
