DEFINE THE LIMIT
Politecnico di Milano
Composition Lab III
2015 | 2016
Reinterpreting the Ideal City in Modern Times
A Fortress of Knowledge
Sabbioneta, Italy
The unique site of the project in the renaissance city of Sabbioneta required a deep analysis of the architectural expression of its main buildings in order to still express this distinctiveness in a modern project that took into consideration the locus as the main design element.
The laboratory asked to redefine the limit of the town set by the ancient wall built in XV century and broken in 1919. The project works both inside the town, redefining Santa Maria Incoronata church and its ancient cloister with a court library, and outside the town, setting the ideological new limit of expansion of the city with a civic room, shaped as the bastion of the ancient wall.
The library’s design aims to confer clarity in the architectural language of the cloister, by completing and redefining its typology. The intention of creating an architecture that exhibits the book as the element that structures the architectural space is the direct consequence of the choosen shape : this is expressed with a central covered court, where the books are exhibited on the shelves.
The civic room takes form through the analysis of the Roman Basilica, taken as a reference for its civil character in the city. It is composed of a central hall surrounded by a porch on the ground level, and a terrace to relate both with the town and the countryside at the upper level.
These two buildings are connected with a linear public space, symbolising a tension between the two most important powers that have always ruled the city: religion and politics.
