Campidoglio 2, Rome, Italy

Rome Council planning historical move from Michelangelo’s Campidoglio
At the beginning of June, the Jury Committee of Rome City Council announced the winner of the competition for the new Civic Offices: “Campidoglio 2”. Mario Cucinella Architects have designed the winning project with Studio Altieri. The development is one of the first ones signed off by the newly elected local administration lead, Gianni Alemanno.

The new council citadel will host 4000 employees in the unified head quarters due to be located in the Ostiense district, in a rich historical context between the Appia Antica park and the Tiber river. The proposed design exploits the meeting of urban and natural landscapes by creating an axis around which the new buildings are distributed. The axis works at an urban scale to symbolically connect the new Civic Offices with the Appia Antica Park and the existing Capitoline Hill in the heart of Rome, where the council offices have been residing since the Middle Ages.

The inspiration for the structure of the building comes from the classic Mikado game where wooden sticks are bundled together in a peculiar game of balance: it is a conformation of interconnected volumes featuring chromatically identifiable facades in red and green.

The three main building blocks will house workspaces and public services such as the library, crèche, auditorium and fitness centre. Communication between different departments will be guaranteed by a circulation route crossing the building.

Careful attention has been given to sustainable design principles. A series of shafts pierce the building bringing fresh air and natural light to the lower floors and allowing substantial savings in energy consumption and CO2 emissions compared to a standard office building.

Mario Cucinella Architects, based in Bologna, are responsible for, amongst other projects, the SIEEB building in Beijing (headquarters of a Chinese-Italian environmental research centre) and for the Villejuif-Leo Lagrange metro station in Paris: their core interest in the theme of sustainable architecture has brought them to the forefront of environmental research
source: www.worldarchitecturenews.com
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