IENI Underground, on the ground
The project is built around three fundamental principles for a City Hall: Institution, Administration and Public purpose.
Institution is contained in the thickness of the ground, as a symbol of local power, rooting in the territory. Emergences give to read the two large rooms location of the town hall, council room and weddings room.
The administration arises on this ground, a glass box revealing the old city hall through it. The volume behaves like a bridge crossing the void, qualifying what is below. This void created by digging the ground, embodies the public dimension, the town hall as a democratic space open to everyone.
Underground is organized around the atrium, the four corners piles qualify the two large side galleries. Two wings in which we find in the first one, the elected offices and the council room, and in the other one the archives, the weddings room and a public restaurant.
The top is articulated around the double height, it consists of open spaces for the town hall various services.
The idea is to take a new look at the ground as a multiple thickness to negotiate, a tension area between the world above and the world below. Entering inside is the only way to measure it. It is no longer the mass but the void that determines the architectural figure.
The project gives a reading of this difference by playing on the contrasts between an infrastructure open to itself and rooted in the site, and a light superstructure overlooking its four sides on the outside.
The patios organize spaces, bringing light and transparency, defining a new relationship with ground and sky.
