Simultaneously didactic, flexible and of continuous interactions.

 

Bicilab Polveriera

location: Reggio Emilia, Italy client: Comune di Reggio Emilia
status: 2022 competition
collaborators: Alessandro Molesini, Omar Ben Hamed, Giulia Iotti, Federico Corallini, Agostino Okuniev
program: Reconversion and recovery of military powder warehouse

 

A very important aspect of the project is the complete reversibility of the internal spaces, considering the internal layout strongly linked to the set-up, without walls or fixed and immovable elements but rather as light partitions capable of defining autonomous areas, correlated and in strong relationship with the undivided spatiality of the large room characterized by the wooden roof that rests on the perimeter walls. This desire has led to the choice of defining within external volumes limited to the square meters allowed by the tender and integrated into the geometries of the building, those service areas that require the presence of masonry structures (toilets, back bars) or technical rooms serving the spaces interiors, without directly impacting them, solving the problems of air exchange, ducting, air supply and return, ventilation of service areas without impacting the restricted building or modifying its openings.

With this setting, in the face of a partial or total dismantling of the set-up, for a revision of the layout or change of use, these "external units" located at the two extremes and designed to serve the internal environments remain fully usable without further masonry, plant engineering, structural works with respect to the protected building. The principle that guides the interior layout is an open and permeable space that allows you to experience the world of the bicycle from different points of view, penetrating the different components that revolve around it and the different users who use it. This does not exclude the definition of functionally autonomous spaces around the central nucleus which characterizes the different internal spaces, without dividing it into watertight compartments.

The heart of the Bicilab is the large central room, conceived as a wooden platform with a longitudinal development that follows that of the building and contained within sloping wooden walls: a concept inspired simultaneously by the structure of a velodrome and by the image that equally identifying as a "sprint" in a cycling race.