The University Educational Center (CDU) is a mixed-use, 14,000 sq. m building located in Rozzano, a municipality south of Milan, which is a relevant part of the cluster of cities that surrounds the capital of Lombardy. We were commissioned by Technint SpA to improve the status of the Rozzano hospital (Humanitas Clinic) by transforming it into a university hospital.
The new building consists in Departments of Medicine, Biotechnology, and Nursing Sciences, and includes accommodations for lecturers and students. We conceived the university project in terms of its transitional nature; a place that negotiates the relationship between the community and individuals and operates between these two concepts.
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On one hand, it is an institutional place that represents the scientific community - a place with a strong collective identity, flows, and meeting areas. On the other hand, it is a space that cultivates individual values and identity - a place that nurtures self-discovery and independence.
The building’s figurative and conceptual diagram is based on this duality. The surface is similar to a skin or a membrane that works as a friction in between two different systems and then becomes transfigured in the transition from the urban public space to an intimate private domain.
The building breaks into strips like the rows of ploughed field and achieves a direct relationship with the landscape surrounding.
The large slopped surface, that faces the hospital, gives on one hand the image of the university, a solid representation of a state's institution, on the other hand, it fades it into the landscape, transforming the nature in artificial.
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