Palazzo Sistema, Regione Lombardia in Milan

PARK Associati, in collaboration with Redesco for structural engineering and ESA for MEP engineering, has won the International Design Competition commissioned by ARIA.

A complex development made of different interconnected buildings, including a 122 m high tower. The structural principle reflects and empowers this variability, combining innovative composite and post-tensioned structures aimed to a mimimum comsumption of material and energy for the construction.

The project includes the demolition of the exhisting buildings located in the plot while keeping in service an adjacent part and the construction of a new unit for office use featuring an in plan C shape.

The unit is composed of several buildings that differ for shape, elevation and function.

There is a tower 122.80 m high composed of 29 floors above ground with a technical roof and two underground levels. Its plan features a pseudo-triangular shape with a 35m side and is designed in reinforced concrete with solid slabs, an eccentric core resisting the seismic actions and with tapered circular columns that keep the tangential line on the façade from the twelfth floor up to the roof the façade has a side diagonal cut off that generates open air double height loggie.

The first eleven floors of the tower feature a more than double in plan surface because of a side by side another building with continuous use premises. On the opposite side of the tower an area called Vela (Sail) with a steel structure supports the inclined façade and the floors connecting the other buildings and constitutes the roof of a triple height green house. A seismic joint divides the Vela from the low rise buildings called Corpo Basso (Low Unit) and Corpo Angolo (Corner Unit) with 9 and 10 above ground levels constructed wit solid slabs and composite steel-concrete floors.

These units are connected by a bridged building, 6 floor high and with an around 40m span with overhanging elements in steel and concrete.

All the structures were designed for a life time of 100 years and in the importance class IV because the compound is considered as strategic in case of extraordinary hazards.

Where not technically used the roofs are fitted with flower-beds and trees allowing for the public use and gathering concourses. Important concourses are expected at ground floor also where there is a park with plants, precast bleachers and spreading vegetation. In between the compound buildings two auditorium halls are within the reach of the park and are roofed with triangular trusses over 18 m spans and composite wood-concrete plates supporting the park area that steps over, like a hill, this construction.

The two underground floors are for parking use and house technical rooms.