Thanks to its strategic position as a ‘city gate’, the project acts as an interface between the ‘modern city’ in the north and the classical city of the nineteenth-early twentieth century in the south, all the while highlighting the current and future heritage. It fits in the skyline of the boulevard that is also fitted with several elevated anchoring points defining the city’s metropolitan scale.
It projects a raised building whose erection took place in an open block structure and following 3 distinct scales of perception:
- a commercial base, a factor of dialogue with the city;
- balconies and gangways, which reinforce the relation between the building and the street;
- the more iconic ridge, a synthesis of the project’s architectural intentions.
The facades of the project have been designed according to a principle of hierarchy and scale progression that has been heightened by the setting-back of some upper floors, in order to sculpt the cornice line and to express the relation with the street with the same fragmentation as the neighbouring fabric.
The creation of a new road makes it possible to reinforce the identity of the site, even to define it, by positioning it on the trace of the listed icehouse, present in the basement, in order to emphasize its presence.
