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Udine, IT | New York, NY | Venezia, IT

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HOPA HOusing PAdova

To live immerse into the green in the city center's heart. In the intersection of two paduan urban realities, the medieval neighbourhood in curtain and the suburban villas surrounded by green, a new living typology is born: the hanging villas.

The park is the project’s center. Every apartment has the day zone related to the green and and the night zone turned to the city and the walking access system. Every unit has a direct view to the park, underlined by a transparent continuous volumetry, with ample openings towards the green in the living room, and a more introspect and closed side to the bedrooms. All the living units becomes a garden house with an ample panorama over the new landscape, crowned by the rooftop villas and its hanging gardens.

The volume, even though thought as a unitary building, has the ability to answer the surrounding demands with very diverse solutions. The objective is to assure the high level of privacy and living quality, in relation both with the existing buildings and the great park area, maintaining at the same time a connection with the context - and above all with via Campagnola – of non dominance and non invasion.

A long line “M” shaped building, three floors high, composes the project’s base structure. To this volume it is added the “hanging villas” as a fragmented forth floor, and the street front volumes in via Campagnola, respecting the existing buildings shape. This “hanging villas”, connected by big balconies and terraces with hanging gardens assures a perception of the intervention in which the highest floor is not continuous and allows space to the sky and light to pass. Besides, this solution reduces the “scale” of the volume, which in the birds eye view becomes a san ensemble of single buildings around a green area.

In the via Campagnola’s front the building presents two strong urban elements: the fenced garden and the portico. In the most compact street part nowadays, the building front is backwarded in order to enlarge the existent fenced garden, obtaining a green filter which garanties a better use of the residential space, frees the view and gives more light to via Campagnola.

The building replicates the existing volumes in the angles, obtaining a more equilibrated scale report between the urban context and the new residential complex. The existing volume in the East angle of via Campagnola is emptied at the ground floor  to make a great entrance portico to the entire residential complex. This portico becomes almost an urban space, a meeting point to the new residents which requalifies the entire street and allows the park view from the street. From this meeting point starts the walking paths to the units surrounded by the condominium green.

It is predicted the pedestrian and roadway accesses from the south and the north to the complex, near the park entrance. Every parking places necessary to the residents and visitors are built in the underground parking and in the north ground park, shadowed by the existing trees. Besides, the entire building and the private gardens are placed at a higher level from the street and the public park, which garanties a correct privacy relation between the public and private spaces even in the ground floor.

The project integrates elements from the existing urban context (the villa, the line (curtain) buildings, the portico, the fenced gardens, the regular rhythm facade), and the specific program elements (the park, the glazed facades towards the green, the hanging elements, the underground parking) conjugating them to make new relations and create new and complex spaces.

The intervention defines a new living quality which is born from the simple union between the city center opportunities and the tranquility that can be found in a huge “green heart”.

 
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Status: Competition Entry
Location: Padova, IT
Firm Role: Architect
Additional Credits: Stefano Gri, Piero Zucchi, Stefania Anzil, Tina Carletti, Elisabetta Paviotti, Tania Teixeira