The project creates a new city part in coherence with the larger process of transformation affecting the area. The anomalous scale of the existing industrial Alfa Romeo precinct is opened to collective use by tracing a new series of pathways connecting it with the surrounding urban net. A new square along via Traiano generates a new diagonal pedestrian way which becomes the main access to the new park. Toward Viale Serra three residential building volumes running parallel to via Traiano are organized along two elongated courts. In the middle of the area, the volume of the former Alfa Romeo cafeteria is conserved and inflected toward the park by the new path cutting its corner. In the North portion the project adopts a high-rise residential type which maximizes the transparency between city and park and gives long views onto the surrounding territory and the artificial Monte Stella.
Subsidized residential slab buildings Nuovo Portello
The three eight-floor high slabs are unified by low walls into a single block. The orientation of the slabs maximizes solar exposure and the views toward the new park, while protecting the intervention from the high traffic noise of Viale Serra, towards which three blind elevations are posed. Pedestrians have access through high porticoes veneered in white stone which overlook the common gardens. On the side toward the park a large built screen protects the deep loggias of the apartments, trying to conjugate high density with high environmental quality.
Subsidized residential tall buildings Nuovo Portello
The two tall buildings, one adjoining via Traiano and the other set back from the street give form together to a new square which is the starting point of the path toward the park framing the front of the Milano Fair. The windows of varying shape and proportion, the different rolling and sliding shutter devices, the deep loggias with the steel and glass parapets are disposed following a series of permutations which maximize the long views toward the city.The use of surface material (de-coloured terracotta tiles and white stone) and the gable silhouette constitute a critical reading of the features of post-war Milanese architecture.
Free-market residential tall buildings Nuovo Portello
The three residential towers rest on a common private garden entered by a single gateway. Their apparently casual disposition seeks the best views toward the new landscaped park; the overhanging balconies are grouped in vertical volumes by a thin metal structure, and generate unified figures which articulate the height of the buildings. The stone cladding in sanded and levigated finishes and the different colours of the sliding shutters, both randomly mixed in different proportion in the three buildings, give variety to the strict modular grid of the facades.
Office rebuilding of the former Alfa Romeo cafeteria Nuovo Portello
The street front of the Former Alfa Romeo cafeteria have been preserved on Via Traiano as has the silhouette, which is "sectioned" toward the park by the new diagonal public path. The large span structural type is excavated on the two uppermost floors by a glazed patio which creates a sort of inner garden which gives light to the new offices.
