Architecture & Web Art

Posts Tagged ‘Italy’

Architect: monovolume architecture + design
Location: Kurtatsch, Italy
Project manager: Pedó Pobitzer
Project team: Christian Gold, Barbara Waldboth, Amgelika Mair
Structural Engineering: Baucon Bozen (Ing. Neulichedl Simon)
Client: Rothoblaas limited Company
Building area: 3,700 sqm
Budget: 5,5 Mil. Euro
Project year: 2005
Photographs: Oskar Da Riz

The Rothoblaas office is a large scale commercial operation specializing in assembling systems and power tools for the woodworking industry. Warehouse and commissioning are situated on the ground floor and a showroom can be found on the upper floor. The aim of the project was to create a compact building with a high level of recognition.

The building as corporate identity of the enterprise; contemporary and representative of the company. This has lead to a functional, compact structural shell, provided with a glass envelope. The main building material employed is wood in order to show the own products.

A jaw-dropping feat of architecture has risen in the Italian city of Nola, just a stone’s throw away from the cataclysmic Mt. Vesuvius. Designed by Renzo Piano, Vulcano Buono is an epic cone-shaped commercial center crowned with a gorgeous sloping green roof. Piano’s “good volcano” contributes a vital new space to the southern edge of the Nola commercial district, which is the most most important freight terminal complex in southern and central Italy.

Inspired by the surrounding landscape, Vulcano Buono has a gently sloping profile that rises from the earth as a grassy green knoll. The structure’s roof is carpeted with a vegetative layer of over 2,500 plants that helps to insulate the interior spaces and reduces the structure’s visual impact so that it’s barely visible from space. Renzo Piano clearly has a penchant for grassy hills – see also the undulating green roof that tops the California Academy of Sciences.