The new regional headquarters of the Guardia di Finanza in Bologna is a project that fits into a complex context, a fringe area enclosed by urban partitions and designed by a series of spaces with a heterogeneous character. DEMOGO‘s project interprets this marginal clipping condition as an opportunity for relationships and regeneration of the area.
The new body, perpendicular to via Tanari and built in continuity with the original nucleus of the Caserma Bertarini, is inserted as an element with a compact layout but characterised by the articulation of the elevated profile. This layout produces a series of of terraces, in continuity with the office areas, designed as extensions outside the main functions of the programme. These elevated gardens, which gradually slope down accompanying the five above-ground floors of the building, are conceived as places that not only offer environmental quality to the work spaces, but also establish a visual connection with the urban landscape of the city of Bologna.
The building exhibits composure and compositional rigour but at the same time incorporates solutions that tend to elaborate a subtle transgression. The façades unfold according to a precise composition that draws minimal variations in relief on the façades. The result is a modular pattern of panels chromatically capable of evoking the dominant red tones contained in the material texture of the city of Bologna.
The relationship of the fronts with their surroundings also fuels the theme of the rule and its alteration within the composition. The result is a form that the architects suggest to be read according to an extended plan of perceptive sequences. In this sense, the foreshortened views and frontal observation points give a progression, which develops both horizontally and vertically, based on the accentuated length of the building. The real element that disrupts and at the same time recomposes the interior spaces is the long staircase that is immediately encountered at the entrance and that develops linearly along the entire length of the building.
The body of the building that houses the new offices is entirely crossed by this element, which not only emphasises the upward progression of the volume, but also visually connects all the levels, guiding the movement and gaze of the people immersed in a promenade that rises above the surroundings.Inside, the building has an ambivalent spatial character, alternating places of privacy dedicated to the operational sections of the Guardia di Finanza with spaces for interaction between personnel. Connections expand and find their way into the large balconies that meet along the staircase on the different levels. The conference room and offices on the short sides always enjoy a green terrace or an unobstructed view of the surrounding landscape. This logic establishes a condition of continuous interchange between the circumscribed internal space and the dilated external urban space, a form of dynamics that intends to include the building in the life of the city and vice versa.
CREDITS
Project: New Headquarters for the Guardia di Finanza
Studio: DEMOGO
Location: Bologna
Year: 2023
Photographs: Iwan Baan
