Alvisi Kirimoto is awarded the Nexum business centre project in Rome

Alvisi Kirimoto has won the ideas competition for the Nexum business centre in Rome, which the studio designed as a creativity workshop inside an eco-friendly building, surrounded by green nature and rich in meeting places. The invitation-only competition was organised by the company Ares (Armellini Real Estate Services) and involved five of the best Italian and international architecture studios. The multifunctional complex will stand beside the Laurentina road, near the Maximo shopping centre, and is made up of various interconnected spaces: six gardens, a transparent central hub and a network of offices divided up into three blocks, generating a total of four buildings with a floor space of 18,000 m² on an area of 9,000 m². The development will comply with LEED® requirements, WELL Building Standard™ and WiredScore®. The construction work is scheduled to start in the latter half of 2022.

“Nexum is a place for connection ‒ between people, the city, the work world and the realm of innovation,” commented the architect Massimo Alvisi, co-founder of the studio. “Six open spaces, a transparent vertical hub for co-workers and digital nomads, and a 4.0 network of offices arranged around green areas and connected to the hub: these are the components we have created for this project.”

 

Nexum takes shape around a central hub

The core to the project is its transparent vertical hub: a glass ‘rod’ set out lengthwise to the site. This space for training and for staging events enables interaction between the various types of professionals using the business complex, as a natural extension of the co-working areas. Also containing the reception area and a cafeteria, the hub acts as a connector between the buildings while on one side it leads to the central courtyard, featuring a large tree and an expanse of water.

 

Flexible offices surrounded by nature

The offices are arranged in three horseshoe-shaped volumes located to the sides of the hub, and each has its own internal courtyard that the work areas look out over. This brings excellent natural lighting and also contributes to passive ventilation, ensuring an optimal wellness context for the people using the buildings. The three blocks ‒ acting as three independent units from a systems and management standpoint ‒ can house private offices, open spaces with workstations, meeting rooms, relaxation areas, phone booths and conference auditoriums: they have in fact been conceived to offer layout flexibility and adaptability, to suit the future occupants’ operational needs. All the spaces are directly connected with green areas, present not only in the courtyards and squares on the ground floor but also in the hanging gardens on the upper floors and in the spacious roof garden ‒ a full-blown park set out with lightweight pergolas providing shade, to make many work and recreational activities possible here.

 

Clear, light architecture

The business centre, which has an underground level accommodating parking and service rooms, stands on an 80-cm travertine stone base: this accentuates the edifice perimeter while slightly raising it above the road level. The ground-floor façade stands slightly back from the marked external edge, providing visitors and users with a sheltered area with full-height glazing that runs along the building perimeter. The three upper floors are light and transparent and wrapped in an aluminium double skin shaping more intimate external areas such as balconies, loggias and walkways.