Framing the process

by I would like it to be credited to me (Riccardo Rivano) and/or to my personal Instagram page (@riccardo.rivano)

Starting from the specific characteristics of the given site, I tried to imagine a building that could make the most of the challenges that the context posed. To better understand how the surrounding could affect the project, I decided to locate the imaginary site in my hometown, Florence in Italy. I also further challenged myself to envision the presence of an imaginary abandoned historical monastery within the site. The private garden of the former monastic complex occupies most of the area in which, due to landscape constraints, is not possible to build. Therefore, the building area results only in a small part of the site – probably the most challenging yet stimulating one to build in – wedged in a relatively dense context between an abandoned monastery and the two busy roads. In this unfavorable narrow and well-defined site, I imagined having to design a mixed-use building in which a new library and an auditorium are located. These are the starting point from which I developed my concept.
Starting from that, a basic model sinks into the ground creating a stepped level to realize a protected public square. By doing so it avoids messy traffic roads and high noise levels. Furthermore, the extrusion of the external plaza inside the building creates a continuous path from outside to inside the building to invite potential users inside the building. At the same time, the public square-agorà establishes a landmark and an attractive destination for the local community. Inside the mixed-use building, the library and the auditorium can be independent of each other with different accesses to permit any theatrical performances that might be set up also during the night.
The functional tripartition (library, auditorium, and connection bar) of the building also affects its volumetric configuration and finally, vegetation is added to make the outdoor space more pleasant and joyful.
The sequence of diagrams was first sketched and then modeled with Rhino. Thereafter, the basic volumes were rendered with V-Ray, and wireframe views were exported and used to post-produce the diagrams with Photoshop and Illustrator. The final layout was then created on InDesign.