Residential Building Refurbishment Via Vincenzo Monti 28, Milano

The job consists of the demolition and reconstruction of a building dating back to the early twentieth century, located in a highly urbanized environment with adjacent buildings along three of the four sides of the construction.

The masonry structure of the existing building consists of two main volumes: a first parallepiped one directly overlooking Via V. Monti and composed of five floors above ground and a second back construction one overlooking the five courtyards belonging to the property and with four floors above ground.

The new building will be used, as the current building is, as residential in the above ground floors and as commercial / office for the ground floor and will match the shape of the existing construction.

The façade overlooking Via V. Monti is subjected to the constraint of the Superintendence and must be entirely preserved. This design constraint yielded significant consequences at the design stage becauase it was necessary to identify a sequence of building demolition and reconstruction phases for assuring the safety and stability of the facade.

The existing building has an underground level housing cellars and technical rooms while the design of the new construction includes the construction of a second underground level for parking use in addition to the cellars and technical rooms. A sequence of supporting works for the boundary excavation is therefore necessary, specifically by using berliner retaining micropiles, paying a particular attention for limiting the displacements and settlements of the foundation walls of the adjacent buildings. Because of this reason it was planned to proceed with a construction with the "top-down" method, with the slab of the first underground floor cast in the first phase for creating a top restraint for the berliner retaining piles.

The new building will then be erected with cast-in-situ reinforced concrete elements: the structure resisting the horizontal actions is composed of four main cores which house the stairs and elevators. Two of these cores are built in advance with respect to the other structural parts and are used for the stabilization of the facade in the temporary phases of the construction. The cast in situ reinforced concrete columns are designed as hinged and resist the vertical actions only. The floors are constituted by cast in situ reinforced concrete two way plates with the aim of limiting as much as possible the depth of the slabs.