Sant'Agabio Complex / Novara social housing

Renaturing an abandoned military area

Brief: "Creation of social housing of different typologies"

Concept of the project: "Social housing project accompanied by shopping center and school"

2014 / Progettazione dell'architettura

Promoter:

Politecnico di Milano

Location:

Novara

Lombardia, Italy

This project ensures the basic living requirements, three housing typologies, and some public areas.

To organize all the elements inside the required area, we use those proposed by Kevin Lynch in ‘The image of the city’

We take into account the natural and urban BORDERS that delimit the plot. After this, we divide the plot into 4 zones or DISTRICTS thanks to the hierarchy of AXES (The main axis, the transversal, and secondary). Leaving in the NODES all the public places, such as the school and the mall. The houses are going to be the MILESTONES; in this way, we ensure a hierarchy.

To hold the biggest number of kinds of residents, we propose 3 different typologies of houses (40m2, 60m2, and 80m2), that are organized in height from smaller to larger areas. In this way, the larger houses are on the top floors.