25_Michele Coco | Cooperative “La Vela-Piccola Casa”, Sciacca

NAME

Designer or design team: Architetto Michele Coco, Luigi Comparone (collaborator)
The project has been submitted by: Michele Coco

Plot area: 886 mq
Gross Area: 4.102 mq

Of which
Residential: 76%
Public/communal areas: 24%
Facilities for the public: 0
Business/trade: 0
Offices: 0
Number of residential units: 26

Typology of users: families
Total building costs: 3.074.216,91
Building Cost = Total Building Cost / Gross Area: 749,44 €/mq
Floor area ratio = Gross Area / Plot Area: 4,63
Work started on date: Wednesday, 6th May 2009
Work completion date: Friday, 28th December 2012

OWNERSHIP
Cooperativa edilizia “La Vela-Piccola Casa”
Promoter: Cooperativa edilizia “La Vela-Piccola Casa”
Allotment rule: Announcement 2001 L.457/78
Reduction cost percentage compared to the market value:
assigment: 35%

LOCATION
Country: Italy
City/town: Sciacca
Address: via Cataldo Amodei, 1

Description of the project:

Urban site
The intervention area is located in the town of Sciacca, within the areas PEEP of the urban renewal program of the district Ferraro. The building stands on a rectangular open space in an urbanized area falling within easy reach of the historic center.
Compositional aspects
The project is divided into contiguous volumes. The shapes independent insist on a unified base which acts as a connective. The architecture is a type house with a vertical development into seven levels above ground and a basement for a garage-parking, in which the rooms are also allocated for housing technological systems. Housing is accessed from the road located upstream of the lot.
The distribution of the interior of the housing is composed of a living room, three bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom and a toilet service. The surfaces of relevance, as well as the non-residential surfaces consist of verandas and balconies, complete the architectural complex.
Characteristics of the building
The design aimed to cushion the impact between the construction and the open space. The total volume is fragmented with slits that suggest a flexible use of space projected from the inside outwards and vice versa, imploded in the opposite direction. The trend of building modules, the play of solid and void, transparency of the system suggested by the materials used, create a deliberate interference condition between the private and the social dimension, a solution of continuity between the built and outer space.
Even the color scheme helps to reduce the external impact of the built volume and, inside, provides intimacy to the spaces making lively structure. Reversing the perspective the same vibrancy of color choice slips in a clear allusion to the theme of water. The theme of the sea journey seems to be an appropriate metaphor to explain this experience constructive intentionally dynamic and open and the outline of the building is a stylized silhouette of a Vela..posing as a tower, albeit deliberately tilted along the vertical axis, prefiguring the entrance to the neighborhood “Ferraro”.

The building techniques adopted and the use of specific materials (plaster coat, aluminum frames with thermal break, ventilated walls fiber cement, mattresses subfloor etc.), The factors related to the orientation, exposure and sunscreens (consisting from large verandas exposed to the south), determine a level of thermal and acoustic insulation as to keep the housing cool in summer and warm in winter. The constructive program put in place has the goal to build a strong social value in an urban context characterized exclusively by the speculative building type. This intervention has been made possible thanks to the cooperation of the Muncipality of Sciacca for the assignment of an area PEEP (Plan for affordable housing and housing) and the Regional Cooperation for the funding of the construction program under the Regional Law n ° 457/78, relating to subsidized housing – facilitated. The beneficiaries of this intervention are those persons according to their economic and social conditions, the essential requirements of law relating to affordable housing and popular, they could take advantage of the financial incentives that the same law provides.