SMART LIFE - LONATO
The proposed housing solution is a response to new housing needs for young people seeking a home without finding a product that can intercept and understand the changing lifestyle, the behaviour pattern, and the economic aspects that determine them.
Variable dimensions, innovative and flexible typologies, large openings in quality locations, common spaces for sociality, sports, food preparation, define a possibility to live that reads the dynamics of contemporary life by returning a living reality which interprets the idea of high quality and services of those who enjoy it.
This pilot project is part of the hilly landscape of Lonato in a place that marks the limit between the recent building and the landscape. The building is a crescent, a shape that historically belongs to architecture and which is in plan a portion of curve, and it turns to the landscape to measure it, to mark a soft line that frames it, allowing all inhabitants to enjoy an intimate and direct relationship with the surrounding hills.
The north side of the project is integrated with a new bicycle track and a public park, while in the south a large green lawn dotted with a large middle tree marks the delimitation with the surrounding area.
The radial arrangement, with which the apartments are located, is structured with a module of 4.2 (average) x 7.7 meters with a 1.8 meter deep loggia. This allows to have a base module that contains a studio apartment (30,5 sqm). The same module can be used 1.5 times for a two-room apartment (45.20 sqm) and two three-room apartments (61.30 sqm), identifying a typological variability that can respond to the diverse housing needs of young singles or couples. The accommodations all have a double view with kitchens and bathrooms to the access side and stays; the rooms (except one variant in one of the two one-bedroom apartments) open to the landscape with large windows.
The distribution consists in three stair-lift spaces located on the north side where a ballroom allows access to the accommodations. This side opens towards the hill and the vegetation integrates the architecture with the context.
Accessibility takes place from the north road directly connected to the nearby roundabout connecting Lonato with Desenzano and the highway.
There are 50 outdoor parking spaces for cars, while under the building another 60 car parks combined with technical and service spaces build a floor covering that disappears into the ground. In this way, the architecture seen in the landscape is rooted on the ground through the hoof while the top is made of transparencies that are reflected in the landscape.
All the rooms are equipped with large windows that define a total dialogue between interior and exterior. Living the landscape could be the slogan of this intervention.
In fact, this architecture is not against the landscape but is in the landscape, it builds and models it and it becomes the complement by defining a new way of enjoying collectively the values.
The building presents a series of common services, on the ground floor there are spaces where is possible to order dinners which can be received hot, where it is possible to meet, have Wi-Fi workstations, and have a small gym. It is defined as an intelligent residence that responds to the needs of those who are looking for accommodation that interprets the new ways of living, made up of nuclei composed of one or two people.
Constructively, this architecture has innovative features from a constructive point of view, combining advanced research into wood and concrete prefabrication, integrating all inspectable plant engineering phases and achieving the highest energy efficiency standards that go beyond the concept of sustainability.
The same materials of the wood and concrete structure become the external characterization to which the blinds with large vitreous mirrors are tied. The apparent simplicity, combined with a sober elegance of the architectural lines, reveals a great constructive wisdom and a new idea of living by defining a real contemporary smart community.