The Frigerio Design studio has created Green Life, the expansion of the Cavagnari Management Centre at the new headquarters of the bank Crédit-Agricole Italia. Green Life is an eco-sustainable headquarter for both the external environment of nature and the internal ‘human’ environment of a company made up of people and shared values, an expression of the new ‘smart and green’ approach with which Crédit-Agricole has renewed its brand identity.
The new volumes of the headquarter, generated by the geometry of the original settlement of Vico Magistretti maintained as a testimony of an era, are arranged on the perimeter of the area to house, in the center, a large park.
The complex is divided into three volumes: the two Ecoufficies connected through a Forum covered by a ‘green hill’. The car parks and facilities are underground so as to have the maximum surface area for the park.
The Forum, a multifunctional space, a meeting and meeting point, houses the reception, refreshment area and the new company restaurant, which is characterized by different fittings and furnishings that allow it to be used also as a meeting and meeting area: a flexible and diversified ‘landscape’ that, immersed in the greenery of the park, enjoys plenty of natural light.
The Ecoufficies are bioclimatic according to the ‘minimal, simple and green’ energy strategy.
Formal and constructive choices reduce maintenance thanks to the use of durable and recyclable details and materials.
The offices have been designed with a smart-working perspective to meet the needs of a new way of working flexible and able to bring people back to the centre.
The ‘Parco Arboretum Crédit Agricole’, of great landscape and environmental quality, rich in contents and possibilities of use for all the bank’s employees, is not only used for its landscape and environmental value but also as a generator of summer microclimate. In addition to the 500 new trees in the arboretum, thousands of shrubs and ornamental plants in a new square, in an amphitheatre with flower garden, make up a green lung of over 7 hectares, which compares with the largest city parks, in terms of size, biomass value and high biodiversity content.
At the climate level, the strategy adopted was to maximize passive energy aspects in order to minimize active energy inputs, and for the necessary energy use renewable sources: ‘energy saving’ also intended as a contribution to environmental improvement.
Ceiling radiant panels integrated with air changes on the perimeter, natural ventilation in the mid-season and ‘free cooling’ at night: for the various indoor environments the project introduces the concept of ‘sensory comfort’, i.e. the optimization of the quality of spaces in terms of hygrothermal, acoustic and technical lighting, maximizing the capture of natural light and using a self-adjustable LED lighting system with sensors. The complex is LEED Platinum certified.
PROJECT Green Life
ARCHITECTS Frigerio Design
LOCATION Parma
YEAR 2018
PHOTO Enrico Cano/Mario Carrieri
