Italian architect Cino Zucchi Architetti + Park Associati recently have completed the new Salewa International Headquarters located in Bolzano, Italy.
+ Read more about plans, elevations, sections and renderings in our earlier story.
The new Salewa Headquarters, one of the most prominent manufacturers in Bolzano, is situated in an exceptional location adjacent to the Bolzano highway suggesting a "landscape" building, in formal dialog with the surrounding steep cliffs. As well as housing new work spaces and an indoor climbing gym, the building aims to provide a space for interaction and communication between the company and its network of suppliers, partners and clients. The new headquarters represents a point of convergence between different elements of everyday life: from physical, social and communicative dimensions to work styles and leisure.
The Salewa headquarter is formed by a series of multifaceted slabs and towers, including a 50 metre-high structure which when built will be the tallest building in the city. The project combines an electro-coloured micro-perforated aluminium skin which protects the most exposed parts of the building with a large vertical glass covering. The resulting visual effect is that of a rock crystal. The interplay between the thin sheet metal-like pillars and the delicate protective layers frame the façades and underline the contrast between the visible and invisible areas. Situated in a particular geographic location, this complex represents a place of information exchange between the dense web of material and immaterial relations that constitute the life of a modern company.
+ Project credits / data
Project: Salewa Headquarters
Location: Bolzano, Italy
Site area: 30.595 sq/m
Volume: 146.248 mc
Cost: General investment: € 40 Mln.
Design phase (beginning and ending month, year)
April 2007 – October 2008
Construction phase (beginning and ending month, year)
July 2009 – October 2011
Architects:
Cino Zucchi Architetti, Milano
Park Associati (Filippo Pagliani, Michele Rossi), Milano
Design team:
Cino Zucchi, Filippo Pagliani, Michele Rossi
with Elisa Taddei (project architect), Alice Cuteri, Lorenzo Merloni, Marco Panzeri, Davide Pojaga, Alessandro Rossi, Giada Torchiana, Fabio Calciati (rendering).
Structural engineering:
Kauer & Kauer Ingenieure, Bolzano
Ing. Georg Kauer, Ing. Ulrich Kauer
Electrical engineering:
Energytech Ingegneri S.r.l., Bolzano
Ing. Gabriele Frasnelli
Mechanical engineering:
Energytech Ingegneri S.r.l., Bolzano
Ing. Georg Felderer
Site supervision:
Plan Team GmbH, Bolzano
Ing. Johann Röck, Ing. Rupert Cristofoletti
Climbing Wall consultant:
Ralf Preindl, Bressanone
Artistic Intervention:
Margit Klammer
Client:
Salewa SpA, Bolzano
Photographers:
Cino Zucchi,
Alberto Sinigaglia
Park Associati
+ About
CZA – Cino Zucchi Architetti
The Cino Zucchi Architetti studio is constantly searching new spatial solutions for contemporary life in the delicate and rapidly changing context of the European landscape. Its goal is to combine innovation and research with professional completeness capable of responding to complex programs on any scale and employing, when needed, a well-established net of specialized consultants.
The studio has designed and realized many commercial, public, industrial and residential buildings, public spaces, renewal plans and master plans for agricultural, industrial and historical areas. It has participated in numerous national and international competitions and is active in the field of interior and exhibition design. The works of the studio have received widespread critical acclaim and have been published in magazines both in Italy and abroad, and have been the subject of numerous exhibitions.
Major recent works of CZA include a large master plan for the Keski Pasila area in Helsinki, residential and office buildings for the former Alfa Romeo-Portello area in Milano, the Group M headquarters in Assago (Milano), the new Lavazza headquarters in Turin, and the extension and renovation of the Turin National Car Museum which was recently awarded the Inarch/Ance 2011 prize. The projects of the studio have been published in books and magazines worldwide.
Cino Zucchi
Cino Zucchi was born in Milano in 1955; he graduated at M.I.T. in 1978 and at the Politecnico di Milano in 1979, where he is currently Chair Professor of Architectural and Urban Design. He has taught architecture at many international seminars and has been visiting professor at Syracuse University and at ETH in Zürich. He is the author of the books L'architettura dei cortili milanesi 1535-1706, Asnago e Vender. Architetture e progetti 1925-1970, and is editor of the book Bau-Kunst-Bau. Together with Cino Zucchi Architetti, of which he is the principal architect, he designed and realized many industrial, commercial, residential and public buildings, a number of projects for public spaces, master plans and renewals of industrial and historical areas. The urban design of the former Junghans factory site in Venice was awarded a mention in the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award 2001 and in the Medaglia d'oro all'architettura Italiana 1995-2003, and won the Piranesi Award 2001, the "Comune di Venezia" Architecture Award 2005 and the Ecola Award 2008.
Park Associati
Set up in 2000 by Filippo Pagliani and Michele Rossi, PARK ASSOCIATI is an architectural design studio which works on a large scale. The investigation into the dynamics and flows in urban places forms the basis of a wide range of projects for the tertiary, manufacturing and residential sectors. Equally important for the studio is the planning of interiors which pays close attention to both craftsmanship and design. This adopts a transversal approach to the planning process and a vision that seeks to interrelate cultures and specializations, experiments with new technologies and is sensitive to the issues of sustainability and energy saving.
Such an approach opens up new possibilities in terms of scope and vision, and on each occasion gives rise to original compositional landscapes where architecture, place, technology and materials combine to create different spatial forms.
The projects on urban and architectonic scale underline the aptitude of PARK ASSOCIATI to research solutions that can combine local identity and technological innovation, this is confirmed by the recent awards in competitions and following realized projects.
The projects of PARK ASSOCIATI have been showed in several exhibitions and published in Italian and international magazines.
Filippo Pagliani
architect, Milan 1968
After completing a degree in Architecture at the Politecnico di Milano, he worked with Renzo Piano from 1992 to 1996 in Paris. He then went on to work in the Michele De Lucchi studio in Milan where he remained until 1999, the year in which he cofounded PARK ASSOCIATI. From 1999 to 2002 he was professor at ISAD (Advanced Institute of Architecture and Design). Since 1996 he has been professor responsible for the final résumé workshop for Construction Element Design at the Lecco regional branch of the Politecnico di Milano. In 2008 he was awarded a doctorate in "Building systems and processes" in the Faculty of Structural Engineering in the Department of Built Environment Science and Technology at the Politecnico di Milano.
Michele Rossi
architect, Milan 1964
He graduated in Architecture at the Politecnico di Milano in 1991 and from 1992 to 1996 collaborated with Michele De Lucchi in the studio of the same name. In 1996 he moved to London where he worked with David Chipperfield and Din Associates and during the same period was Visiting Professor at St. Martin's School of Art. In 1999 he returned to Italy where he cofounded PARK ASSOCIATI. He taught from 1999 to 2001 at the European Institute of Design in Milan, and from 1999 to 2002 at ISAD (Advanced Institute of Architecture and Design) and since 2005 has been a contract lecturer at the Politecnico di Milano.
+ Image gallery | photography by Cino Zucchi, Alberto Sinigaglia & Park Associati
