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Podium, an invisible transition from public to private spaces

Green Stone Sicaf SPA

Innovation and Design  /  Future
Green Stone Sicaf SPA

The design intent of Podium is to give back to the city the relationship with a unique-featured area: a park embraced by the urban fabric of Rome Municipio II with a history deeply rooted into the territory. Podium reinterprets this legacy, listening to the city and the triggers it generates on the plot. The result is an organic design unicum where the existing topography becomes an opportunity to create a smooth, invisible transition between public and private space. A common ground populated by active anchors on top of which the residential compound gently leans connecting with the park and generating an active dialogue between natural and built spaces.

The project is shaped by its relationship with the urban and natural context as Podium dynamically responds to three different pressures: from south and east the consolidated urban fabric and the “palazzina romana” typology contemporary reinterpreted; from west the Nemorense park that invades the site with a unique natural pattern; from the center the reinterpretation of the new living trends where the edge between indoor and outdoor becomes narrower and narrower, leaving ground to recreational and social areas, a new paradigm of urban activation.

Podium is characterized by the integration of both passive and active environmental strategies that will allow it to be one of the first LEED-certified developments in Rome. The shape and orientation of the volumes offers quality views to 99% of the residential units, while the system of cantilever terraces and the tall, narrow windows that characterize the facade protect the buildings from overheating while allowing generous diffuse daylight in all living spaces. Podium is an 100% electrically-powered development (part of which is produced locally by the photovoltaic system integrated at roof level) as well as a low potable water consumer thanks to a complex system of both storm and gray water collection and reuse.

The project extends the concept of sustainability not only to the construction and operational phases but to the whole lifecycle. To do so, the facade becomes a complex parametric system that - together with structural engineering and MEP coordination (i.e. the positioning of all vertical MEP distributions either adjacent to the core or within the external walls’ thickness) - transforms the floorplans in a flexible tool, able to respond to our constantly-evolving lifestyle (i.e. the pre and post COVID scenarios we all experienced) and to offer nine possible configurations without having to modify the envelope. Another point of strength of Podium that expands the concept of sustainability in accordance to the UN SDGs is the total integration of the different functions. In particular the social housing, thanks to the design of the public realm and the park, where local biodiversity id preserved and enhanced. Podium explores and represents a synthesis between composition and construction, anticipating future site-related issues and reinterpreting in a contemporary way key elements of traditional roman architecture. A new integrated urban realm, house of the new ways of living into our cities.

Due to the mix of its complexity, scale, urban context, innovation and landscape integration, Podium represents the most prominent project for Green Stone. Within an abandoned and empty urban plot, a wound that’s been opened for 15 years, the development aims at regenerating the urban space, promoting social interaction and creating a new sense of community, putting the final user at the very heart of the process through the application of a vision based on sustainability and wellbeing.

Credits

 Roma
 Italia
 Confidential
 12/2025
 14700 m2
 Confidential
 Green Stone Sicaf SPA
 a-fact architecture factory
 a-fact architecture factory, Studio Busnengo, CHVL, Proteo, LAND, iDEAS, Tekser, SEAP, GAD
 Studio Busnengo, CHVL, Proteo, LAND, iDEAS, Tekser, SEAP, GAD

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