The Green Gallery reinterprets history and adds an internal park for employees's well-being

The goal of the project for the new Raicam Driveline factory in Mondovì was to create a comfortable, non-alienating environment for the factory's workers and employees. To achieve this goal, a green space was introduced, with translucent roofing, inside the work spaces, and a careful study of the use of natural light to illuminate the interior spaces. The production environments are developed around a green gallery, an element of aggregation between the production and the technical center, an indoor-outdoor space, usable at any time of the year. The gallery is inspired by the nineteenth-century commercial ones created in many European cities, but reinterpreted as an internal park. The production area bordered by a translucent plexiglass wall and the tech center bordered by a structural glass facade overlook it. The Green Gallery is divided into three parts, the one to the south-east in front of the entrance to the tech center is accessible to guests and external visitors. La a central area enclosed in an envelope with a structural glass facade that can be opened as a relaxation area and connection between production and services. Finally, the south-west part in front of the canteen is used as an outdoor dining space in summer and in mild seasons. The pavement is essentially made up of a walkable green lawn, with ten plants of ginkobiloba, a deciduous plant whose leaves are tinged with a pale green in spring, passing through an intense green in summer, and take on a bright yellow color in autumn. , thus marking the changing of the seasons. The natural lighting of the production space is ensured by the skylight windows on the roof, by the front wall completely in plexiglass that overlooks the gallery and the side walls, by a continuous glass window at eye level that allows workers to perceive the outside. at every point of production. The internal spaces of the tech center are affected by the sun's rays indirectly or after being filtered. The structural glass facade to the south-east, overlooking the green gallery, is reached by the sun's rays after they have been filtered by UV rays from the plexiglass present on the roof. The north-west structural glass facade receives light from the screening made of polypropylene ropes and climbing plants, directly the cold one coming from the north-west side, and reflected the warm one coming from the south-east. The natural lighting in the rooms is complemented by a high CRI artificial LED lighting system that ensures faithful color perception, with a control system that allows you to keep the brightness level of the working environments constant and powered by a photovoltaic system. To contain the construction costs of the building, which is spread over an area of 12,000 square meters, low-cost technologies and materials were used such as prefabricated reinforced concrete structures, polypropylene ropes, polycarbonate and plexiglass. The tech center on the street front is spread over two levels, on the ground floor the common service rooms, the research laboratories and the canteen, on the first floor offices, meeting rooms and spaces dedicated to research and development. The main facade of the tech center is characterized by two casings, the outermost one a sunshade curtain and light refractor, is made up of intertwined polypropylene nautical ropes, which act as a support for climbing plants, so as to have a variable degree of shielding with the changing of the seasons. The internal envelope consists of a high energy performance glass curtain wall, with a semi-reflective effect. The space between the two envelopes is used as a suggestive access and service path for employees. The ropes that connect the sky to the earth with soft intertwining are a metaphor for the connection and adduction systems produced by Raicam Driveline in the field of mechanics. In the external area surrounding the building, white birch trees have been planted, typical trees of the Langhe area. The Gate to the Factory and the Tech Center is represented by a large sculptural portal with a portion of a glass canopy, capable of creating an evocative play of light and shadow, connected to a small glazed volume with a welcoming function.