“LB36” Residential Building

An upper middle-class residential neighborhood not far from the center of Bologna is a tangible example of what is behind the buzzword “urban renewal”. Italy’s housing stock in large measure dates back to the years following World War II. From the 1950s to the late 1970s, a “Reconstruction Plan” was the driver behind the replacement of dilapidated, old, often bomb-damaged buildings with new, larger constructions. Among the inducements was a waiver of municipal taxes if the owners completed their buildings in record time. 

Added to that was the fact that the land-use plans established by a sensible town planning law passed in 1942 were for the most part ignored. Inevitably, the result was the mushrooming throughout Italy of an inordinate number of poor-quality constructions built to no underlying criterion. The name for this practice is well known: building speculation, masterfully portrayed even at the time by Francesco Rosi’s historic movie Le mani sulla città. Thanks to those makeshift construction techniques and shoddy materials we have inherited a huge second-rate building stock that is either destined to collapse or be torn down – the latter, clearly the more advisable option, if nothing else, for reasons of public safety. This at least has been the fortunate case of the LB36 building that replaced a less than mediocre construction that was demolished – an expensive operation, especially in consolidated built-up areas. 

Rising from the ashes of an example of dilapidation itself, the new five-story building designed by TECO+partners comprises four floors with apartments of about 100 sq. m each, organized around a central stairwell, and a fifth penthouse level. The apartment floorplans have been designed in accordance with the building’s urban context. The north side runs along a main, more “public” street, and is therefore where the designers placed...

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