Thesis title:
NOVARTIS CAMPUS: THE WALKTHROUGH. Laboratory building in Novartis campus. The mediator between the campus and the city
Date of discussion:
19 December 2018
Student:
Giorgi Maisuradze
Supervisor
Francesca Battisti
Professors of the Studio
Francesca Battisti (Architectural Design)
Mauro Marinelli (Architectural Design)
Angela Silvia Pavesi (Technology and Design in BIM Environment)
Gianpaolo Rosati (Structural Design)
Noel Adolf Van Hattem (Technical Plants)
Narges Golkar (Complex Infrastructures)
New Graduates Prize, awarded by the Order of Architects of Milan annually
SHORTLISTED PROJECT
Abstract:
Every epoch in the modern economic history of our society has required an architecture that accommodated that needs of the time. Novartis site, reconfigured by phase following the Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani’s urban plan and vision, is setting an example and achieving a significant milestone in the conception and design of corporate campus. This thesis project explores the potentialities of a context-specific interventions to complete the urban grid and prefigure the rules for the campus expansion and for the connection of the green arteries on both of the river banks. On an urban scale, a new lab building acts as a mediator or a “pass-through” element strategically placed on the campus ordering grid to reinforce the “from west-city to east-river direction”. The built and open spaces are articulated in an axial way, providing the campus with a sequence of additional public spaces and green spots, a “green axis” visually linking the city and the Rhine and, in a long-term vision, also spatially. The building should be experienced: a going through public space, connected to campus’s main street, “excavates” and shapes its material body. In the tectonic of the pre-cast concrete main façades, the building individual expressiveness is harmonized with the spatial continuity that the urban conception informing the masterplan requires to make a “good piece of city”.