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Steel structures and RIGOROUS geometric façades
The new Campus Milano Internazionale in Milan’s Bicocca district is a project backed by InvestiRE SGR, the real-estate management arm of Lombardia-Comparto Uno. This student housing block was designed by GaS Architects - Goring & Straja Studio, drawing heavily on the spirit of place and helping with the overall urban regeneration in this neighborhood. The design for this fifteen-floor housing block was created by Pichler Projects, using a steel load-bearing structure and a combination of glazed and opaque façade sections to forge a harmonious dialogue between the building interior and the surrounding exterior. The use of glazing in four different colors and the white for the metal cladding produce a rigid geometric pattern for the façade. The housing block has 460 bed spaces, communal areas, gyms, canteens and kitchens to cater for the students’ needs. The arrangement of the private and communal spaces was coordinated with the architectural layout of the façade cladding to ensure the appropriate amount of privacy in personal spaces and sufficient openness in the shared spaces to create a building that integrated into the context and did not become an isolated space.
Pichler Projects was in charge of the construction, providing a turnkey solution that involved creating the structure, the façade envelope, doing all the construction and installation work and providing the furnishings, all in a very short time period. At the heart of achieving such speed was a building structure that lent itself to tight building site deadlines and a tidy construction area - vital elements in moving the 550 tons of steel for the columns and beams that form that core of the lead-bearing structure. The floors and roof were created using “slim floor” construction, covering 10,000 and 730 sq. m respectively but only 210 cm thick, including 160 cm of honeycomb structure and 50 cm of complementary casting. Stairs, panels and railings are the final carpentry touches that help give the building its specific identity.
