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Bologna City Council Offices

MCA - Mario Cucinella Architects

Bologna City Council Offices
By Francesco Pagliari -

Bologna City Council’s new “single” office complex, designed by Mario Cucinella Architects, is an ambitious architectural and urban development project. Located on a key city site (formerly occupied by the wholesale fruit and vegetable market) just beyond the railway station and its tangle of tracks, the new headquarters are the latest development in an area that has maintained its regular grid format over the years.
Earmarked to be a driver of architectural innovation for the whole city, the complex is a prime example of forward-thinking, functional building applying advanced technology to ensure sustainable, energy-efficient comfort-zone interiors. The project brief also included setting the standard for a new kind of public space, returning to values of liveable urban neighbourhoods that deliver a range of services and functions. So as well as bringing together the city’s various offices and their 1300 employees (formerly scattered over the city in some 20 separate locations), the complex includes private businesses, restaurants, a nursery school, kindergarten and post office. The rectangular footprint of the complex recalls the ground plan of the former general market. The new project does not rise as one single building, however, but like a sundered rock splits into diagonal faults, creating a series of unexpected spaces and perspective views. Three triangular or trapeze-shaped buildings of different height (8 to 12 storeys) are arrayed to create a central pedestrian square from and onto which thoroughfares depart and converge.
Providing access to the busy city streets beyond, the circulation routes become typical urban spaces conducive to socialisation. These and the slightly sunken square comprise a series of flat areas, ramps, and staircases with glazed parapets. To one side the main entrance to the city council offices: a covered area protected by a transparent canopy and landmarked by an almost sculptural system of oblique trestle steel...

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