2024 Summer Issue of Urban Land - 68

the students [who] are living there, " Koop
said.
" Milan is a
courtyard city-
[with] these
pockets of open
spaces that are
mysteriously
hidden away as
you walk along
the streets. And
oftentimes, in
the lower-income
buildings, those
courtyards will
be lined with
these communal
terraces. "
- Colin Koop,
SOM
One important choice was to restore two
of the three old railyard buildings, which Koop
said was not a difficult decision to make. " It
was a no-brainer and beautiful. I was quite
inspired by them and felt ... they represented
those eras, those layers of history on the site.
" It was costly-we had to [devote] significant
funds to restoring both of them-but I
think the benefit ... we have now is that the
project doesn't just go in as this enormous
mega-construction. Now we have the benefit
of the six new buildings getting placed next to
two historic buildings, and hopefully that gives
it much more connection to its context more
quickly, " he said.
For the landscaping, Koop said he shared
a vision for the park similar to that of the
project's landscape architect, Michel Desvigne.
" My vision was not a kind of park, per se ... it
was a little bit of everything all intermingled in
a single space, so you've got restaurants and
cafés filling out right next to the basketball
courts right next to the garden walks, which
are adjacent to a large plaza where people
can sell [at] a green market on the weekend, "
Koop said. " It needed to have all those different
pieces together. "
What light through yonder window
breaks?
One way SOM tried to bring people and
spaces together was by including large communal
balconies that stretch between the six
buildings, which Koop said is a feature he borrowed
from Milanese apartment houses.
" Milan is a courtyard city-[with] these
beautiful pockets of open spaces that are
mysteriously hidden away as you walk along
the streets. And oftentimes, in the lowerincome
buildings, those courtyards will be
lined with these communal terraces, " Koop
said. " Sometimes, you would actually climb
staircases and walk along these [terraces] to
get to the doors of the various apartments-
people would do their laundry on them,
people would sit on them. This is definitely a
homage to that tradition. "
The 13-20 foot (4-6 m) communal " balconies "
that connect the six new buildings will
have green [vegetation] walls growing over
68
URBAN LAND SUMMER 2 024
them, he said, but, at the same time, he hopes
they will be kind of a public space that connects
the students with other city residents,
" so that there's a real relationship between the
balcony and the people below. "
Sustainable buildings
Sustainability was another important feature
in the design, one mandated in its financing,
a €250 million ($268 million) sustainabilitylinked
loan from the Intesa Sanpaolo bank.
The village is being built according to
nearly zero-energy building requirements. All
buildings will be LEED certified, with more
than 30 percent of the energy generated via
renewable solar systems, and a rainwatercollection
system that is to reduce carbon
dioxide emissions for heating and cooling by
40 percent.
Koop noted two design choices that helped
make the buildings much greener-first, the
tilted roofs, which made the solar panels 15
percent more productive, and second, the use
of a modular prefabricated building system
for the buildings' frames, which reduced their
embodied carbon by 20 percent.
In addition to being greener, the modular
system has also proved to be much faster
than traditional building methods. " It's essentially
a kit of parts-they use cranes to erect
everything .... It's an incredibly fast process, "
Koop said.
As a design approach, the modular system
had no downsides. " There are constraints that
come with any system [you choose], " Koop
said, " but I don't know if I think it's any more
constrained than working in a steel system or
a concrete system. The real constraint is, honestly,
the fact that it's student housing, which
has to be done with hyper-efficiency on a
floor-plate basis. "
Yet despite the time pressure of completing
the village ahead of the games, SOM
has focused largely on a future in which the
Porta Romana " is more residential, when there
is more foot traffic, when it is going to be
located next to a really large public park that's
at the heart of the future development, " Koop
said. " It's [designed less] for Day 1 than it is
for Day 1,000 or 5,000. " UL
BEN VOYLES is a Berlin-based business writer.
2024 Summer Issue of Urban Land

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of 2024 Summer Issue of Urban Land
