The intervention was located in an area of decommissioned railway land at Rogoredo Station. The land is listed as an area of urban renewal (ATU) by the Territory Governance Plan (TGP) of Milan.
The plot itself is about 21000 m2. Covered area, area for foundations could be 50% of it. For the student housing we could use 9000m2, we also had to consider that part of the land has to be given to public and has to have green areas.
For the future the city is planning a connection of the two sides of the railway tracks. Since part of the site has to be given to public and the student housing needs a quick connection with the other parts of the city then we allowed a passage to the Rogoredo railway station through our site with a underground tunnel. Between the two student residences there's a central plaza which leads to the underground tunnel.
One of our objectives was also a urban renewal of this industrial area. The site is surrounded by factories, storages, offices, it's hard to find any entertainment (which is again important for students) but also other publicly usable functions. So we decided to use the basement and ground level of these two buildings for co-working spaces, auditorium, exhibition hall, café etc. Behind the two buildings are private parks that can be opened for public on the weekends.
On the first picture on the left you can see underground parking both for student residences but also for the two apartment buildings on the sides. There are two ramps leading down to the parking lot from the street from the outer sides of the apartment buildings so that the traffic wouldn't be too busy around the central plaza.
The design of the buildings had to be energy effiecient. So we ran a few sun studies (which are documented on the panel on the left) and found the most optimal orientation for the buildings. Also we saw that it would be effiecient to shift the living units towards the north and leave the southern side covered with balconies. This is also the reason why the northern and southern facades of the buildings look different. South has balconies with sunshades which rotate to block the intensively heated walls.
Ground floor on the left, basement on the right. Areas covered with light blue are for public use.
On the left hotel type floor (1,3,4 floor) and
on the right mini-residences and integrated rooms (2,5,6 floor).
on the right mini-residences and integrated rooms (2,5,6 floor).
The organisational model of the residence had to be mixed and provide:
a) 50% of the spaces of hotel type;
b) 20 % of the spaces of mini-residence type;
c) 30% of the spaces of the integrated accommodation type.
Elevation of northern facade from the central plaza.
Elevation of the southern facade from the central plaza.
Section B-B, section A-A, section C-C.
On the left: view of the southern facade from the private park.
On the right: view through the ribs to the central square.
On the right: view through the ribs to the central square.
On the panels above are shown the details of multiple parts of the building.
On the left panel are brought out the calculations to select the best energy solution for our building.
On the panel in the center are shown different thermal zones which we had to use to calculate our building's energy efficiency and EPi,limit. We couldn't get the results from a software Best Energy, which was provided by Politecnico di Milano, because we had too many corners and too complex geometry to run the simulation. This is why the calculations aren't finished completely.
