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Architecture practices Barreca & La Varra and ITIStudio have applied the rhythmic harmony of Renaissance architecture to overcome the constraints and revamp a 1970s building in Scandicci, a small town, which, although close to the world-famous historic center of Florence, is light years away from that city’s rigorous beauty. Indeed, it may well be on account of this scrappy, disjointed neighborhood so conceptually distant from the enclave where the rules of classic Florentine architecture are uniformly obeyed that the designers felt free to break out of the mold and reinterpret them.
Located in the south-west portion of metropolitan Florence, Scandicci mushroomed during the 1960s as people moved out of Florence and others flooded in from the Tuscan countryside. The population increase led to urban expansion and the appearance on vacant lots of rows of aligned apartment blocks in the style and spirit of those years.
The town hall and office building – formerly occupied on the ground floor by one of the region’s major banks and earmarked for renovation – are clear examples of the architecture of those years. This was the time when Rossi, Gregotti, Aymonino, and Valle began to explore areas beyond the walls of old town centers and to build imposing, monumental edifices in keeping with context and geography. These two buildings reflect the sort of designs that appeared: complex, articulated spatial distribution and massing, ample porticoed areas, loggias, and cantilevered volumes assembled in an extraordinary mix of different levels.
The new brief entailed the requalification of the existing office building to contain the headquarters of a single tenant. This required structural consolidation, reinstatement, interior strip-out, and a new façade design. A complex and ambitious operation, it involved numerous professional partners: ITIStudio representing the owners, Barreca & La Varra for the tenant,...
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