Former Wine Warehouse Trieste

FORMER WINE WAREHOUSE / TRIESTE

FORMER WINE WAREHOUSE / TRIESTE ARCHEA ASSOCIATI

Editorial project Forma Edizioni srl Florence, Italy redazione@formaedizioni.it www.formaedizioni.it Editorial director Laura Andreini Editorial consultant Riccardo Bruscagli Editorial staff Maria Giulia Caliri Livia D’Aliasi Beatrice Papucci Graphic design Silvia Agozzino Elisa Balducci Augustina Cocco Canuda Isabella Peruzzi Mauro Sampaolesi Alessandra Smiderle Translations Miriam Hurley Photolithography LAB di Gallotti Giuseppe Fulvio Florence, Italy Texts © the authors Photo credits © Pietro Savorelli; pp. 8-9, 14-47, 52-119 Image © 2018 DigitalGlobe / Image © 2018 TerraMetrics; pp. 12-13 © Donato Riccesi; pp. 48-49, 50, 51 © Claudio Visintini; pp. 158, 166-167 © Gabriele Crozzoli; pp. 159-165, 168-241

© 2018 Forma Edizioni srl, Florence, Italy The editor is available to copyright holders for any questions about unidentified iconographic sources.

All rights reserved, no part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, without prejudice to the legal requirements provided for in Art. 68, sub-sections 3, 4, 5 and 6 of Law No. 633 of 22 April 1941 First edition: October 2018

HISTORICAL HERITAGE AS FUTURE RESOURCE

Luca Molinari

Italian architecture has always stood out for its extraordinary ability to work on an existing context and, on each occasion, turn it into an invaluable opportunity to reconsider the new project’s urban role and the potential it can unleash.

One point that struck me in Aldo Rossi’s A Scientific Autobiography was about architecture’s power to survive the functions for which it had been originally designed.

If a space is well designed and built, it persists despite everything and becomes a latent opportunity to reconsider and imagine it with ideas and perspectives that look to the future and to a life that changes.

What we now call a state of abandonment is nothing other than a society announcing its failure to look at the places around it as a chance to build different, alternative future forms that can revive dormant energy.

Italian and other European cities are extraordinary testing grounds for this cultural and construction ability, as they are a physical and conceptual atlas of worlds that experience a continuous, subtle, diffuse metamorphosis, which is our urban culture’s genetic make-up.

At the roots of European and Mediterranean architecture are factors like demographic pressure turned into physical and housing density, a shortage of resources, geography that necessitates proximity, and a historical legacy that requires attention to the existing architecture. This continues to be an incredible potential for those who do not resign themselves to considering our cities just places of a mummified, nostalgic memory.

Far from a recent phenomenon, this quality is long-standing and deeply rooted in our minds and in all our senses. We find it in the hundreds of recipes that use things we cooked the days before, in skillful craftsmanship that renders recycling a sophisticated art, and in architecture that keeps on reshaping every volume and section of existing systems to rethink them with unexpected vision.

One such positive example is the restoration and conversion of the Former Wine Warehouse that Archea Associati just completed in the center of Trieste’s old port. Built in the early 20th century, located next to the fish market and a short ways from Piazza Venezia, it had the traditional building type of a large unified space built of sandstone blocks, and pitched roof (no longer extant) and had long been abandoned, left as a ruin, victim to neglect and endless debate about the future of this strategic section of the city.

The design choice, partly required by constraints, but far from a given, was to keep the original building envelope and redefine the meaning of a new building in 10

this part of the city, transforming it from a technical, service building to an urban and commercial attraction.

This restoration and conversion project became a chance to turn it into a technological workshop, as Archea often does, intelligently avoiding making a distinction between the architecture’s composition and its construction potential.

The old walls were sectioned and disassembled. The footprint remains the same but its full capacity is used by excavating two levels under the coastline to increase the usable area and add underground parking through a system of reinforced concrete dividing walls that are quite substantial both in technological terms and in total investment.

Archea envisioned a house within a house: keeping the original face, not betraying the historical building’s appearance, and inserting another building inside, structurally autonomous and contemporary in the technologies adopted to make it suit the new use that awaits it. The choice to work on the double envelope is intelligently openly stated, creating a visible distance between the two envelopes, increasing the depth of perception when looking inside the building and creating a feeling of amazement in the shift from the historical envelope to the contemporary structure. This is achieved through the use of a thin moat filled with water, proclaiming the building’s true nature.

This effect is further augmented on the side facing the city through the empty space between the internal entrance, marked by a large central bridge and two monumental staircases leading to the different floors, whose diverse, curving shapes state the new project’s character.

Ten years ago, in Archea’s project for the library in Nembro, it had already taken a similar strategy, forging an unusual relationship between the existing building and the new project. The old horseshoe volume was complemented with a new building clad in fire red ceramic panels that let colored light filter inside to reveal the reading rooms.

Here, the effect is inverted, the Wine Warehouse’s memory is kept on the exterior and it works by revealing its new contemporary core. The metallic roof contributes to this effect, resting only on the contemporary structure, set back from the existing footprint, whose structure ends up defining the historical boundary.

What was once the forgotten ruins of a Former Wine Warehouse is now an original small center in the heart of a port that had had trouble finding its own identity, proving that architecture still has the power to redefine the fragile sections of our cities and the potential to stoke unhoped-for possibilities.

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50

51

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A GLASS CUBE WITHIN A STONE CUBE

Marco Casamonti

The metaphor of a house within a house, as embodied in the image of the “matryoshka” Russian doll, are part of the original building’s nature: a residential building on the outside and a place to store wine on the inside. The Former Wine Warehouse has always had an extraordinary, fascinating dual nature: outwardly, it appears as a city building with windows and architectural devices that dialogue with the urban setting, whereas inside there was an accumulation of tanks covered with glass tiles to allow it to perform its function as a port facility. In construction terms as well, it was originally a solid wall surrounding cement vats covered by a lightweight metal structure.

All around its exterior was a kind of street bench designed as a raised loading surface, particularly useful to protect the building’s valuable contents from high water, which still hits the Rive on winter days of high wind. These elements were used as a narrative structure for the architectural story, both at the behest of the local superintendency, but for the common goal of giving stability to the building’s urban image in Trieste.

This story is as simple in terms of composition as it is complex and consequentially challenging in terms of construction.

The new building, as a transposition of the original architectural concept, has a dual nature that reflects the idea of one building inside another: the first, external building is historic and appropriately restored, and the second is contemporary and glass, like a container detached from its envelope. In the midst of a channel of water, the two buildings seem to float one within the other like wine once did in the vats.

One building belongs to the city, fitting in within its design and solid stone; the other belongs to the life of the Rive and its new post-industrial tourism use. There is no question that the intentional essence of this project is in conserving the past while bringing it up to date with the city’s contemporary life. The materials and its physical construction also come out of this almost too obvious narrative structure. The interior of the historic wall were entirely clad in small glass tiles, as the tanks once were. The only difference is in the color, now golden instead of neutral, a reference to the Vienna Secession movement between the late 19th century and early 20th century driven by extraordinary figures like Josef Hoffmann and Joseph Maria Olbrich. The extensive use of reflecting surfaces and glass in the gap between the two envelopes lets the light bounce and project within the new building, arriving even at its lowest level. As is easy to guess given the building’s seafront position, the excavation work required a complex, difficult process of disassembling and preserving the historic wall, followed by building a bulkhead of secant piles to make it possible to build a waterproof pool. The 120

historic wall was subsequently reassembled on the pool by sections, cut and preserved, then connected and structurally protected by a casing of concrete clad with hand-cast glass tiles in accord with an ancient Venetian tradition. This process of anastylosis made it possible to build a parking lot below the entire original perimeter, on top of which the new glass cube rests as if suspended above a stretch of water, reflecting its contour. A number of bridges allow passage between the two envelopes, that of the historic stone wall and that of the contemporary glass wall. The bridges lightly cross the gap space, letting the buildings’ mutual reflections be admired. This space was then covered by a large cantilever roof, projecting over ten meters. Built with steel supports and large glass panes to let in light but not rain between the two enclosures; the outer and solid enclosure is open, and the lightweight, transparent internal enclosure is hermetically sealed against Trieste’s weather elements, which can be quite extreme, due in part to the bora wind. The most striking aspects of the design are the views and being able to see another facade through the historical wall, suspended over a channel of water on which it never rains; only the wind can ripple its surface, making the building’s reflection quiver like the boats moored along the quays. The raised podium all around the original facade holds the ventilation grids for the underground parking lot to prevent water from leaking inside. This serves as a safety barrier and at each point of connection with the Rive it has a pneumatic system of watertight closures that protect the parking lot from the risk of flooding (of course, if the high water stays below 80 centimeters from the new and old base).

The surface of the roof of the internal glass cube, as well as the steel and glass extension of the cantilever roof, is clad in ceramics of different colors, shading from gray to pale blue to dark blue, so that from the surrounding houses, or from above, the building’s skin appears iridescent, merging with the sea surface. Chimneys and vents are concealed in small conical volumes that adorn the roof and make it part of the urban and natural setting, as broad and beguiling as Trieste’s coast line.

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WEST ELEVATION

SOUTH ELEVATION

S

W

124

0

2

5 m

EAST ELEVATION

NORTH ELEVATION

E

N

125

SECTION CC

C

C

128

0

2

5 m

PLAN LEVEL -2 / PARKING SPACES

N

129

FACADE CELLS DETAIL

+5.22 m

A

B

B

+0.82 m

A AXONOMETRIC SECTION 01.

Uprights made of Cor-ten steel plates 02.

Cross-members made of Cor-ten steel plates 03. Anchoring brackets 04. Acoustic insulation of elastomer beams 05.

Halfen continuous section 06. RC slab ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– VERTICAL SECTION AA Facade connection

SECTION OF SUPPORTING STRUCTURE

01. Microcement floor 02. Sand-cement base 03.

Floor fan-coils 04. External extra-clear laminated glass 05.

Chamber with Argon gas 06.

Central extra-clear glass 07.

Internal extra-clear float glass

01

08.

Brass mesh placed in the PVB 09. Silicone seal 10.

Cor-ten steel plate 11.

Insulation of elastomeric cross-members 12.

String-course mineral wool insulation 13. Lightweight screed

02 20

14.

RC slab ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– HORIZONTAL SECTION BB Facade connection

03

01.

Halfen continuous section 02. RC slab

04

03.

Anchoring bracket in zincplated steel 04. Reinforced concrete slab external line

05

05.

Mineral wool insulation 06. Cor-ten steel string-course plate

06

07.

Uprights made of Cor-ten steel plates 08. Cross-members made of Cor-ten steel plates 09.

Brass mesh placed in the PVB 10. Internal extra-clear float glass 11.

Chamber with Argon gas 12.

Central extra-clear glass 13. External extra-clear laminated glass 14.

Silicone seal

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AXONOMETRIC SECTION

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 17

10

11

12

13 40

14

5.8 VERTICAL SECTION AA Facade connection 18.5

01 02

50

03

04 05 06 07

21

08 09 10 11 5.8

12

13 14

HORIZONTAL SECTION BB Facade connection

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SECTION AND ELEVATION OF BELVEDERE

B

01

02

A B

03

A +5.22 m

04

05 06 07 08

09

10 11

+0.82 m

12

SECTION AA ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– SECTION AA 01. S ecco Sistema door with extra-clear glass 02.

Extra-clear glass facade 03. E xternal cladding in burnished brass 01

04. Corrugated sheet 05. HEB 240 06. UPN 350 07. Polystyrene insulation 08. I nternal Cor-ten steel cladding

+5.22 m

09. Tubular section

02 03

10. Microcement floor

04

11. Concrete screed with electro-welded mesh 12. HEB 260 ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– SECTION BB

05

01.

Burnished brass cladding

06

02.

Linear LED lighting fixtures

07

03. UPN 350

08

04. HEB 240 05.

Burnished brass intrados 06. E xternal extra-clear laminated glass, 12+12 07. Chamber with Argon gas

09

08. I nternal extra-clear laminated glass, 12+12

10

09. Microcement floor 10. Concrete screed with electro-welded mesh

11 +0.82 m

12

11. Corrugated sheet 12. Floor fan-coils

13

13. UPN 320

14

14. HEB 260

15

15. Internal cladding of glass tiles

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SECTION BB

0

50

100 cm

04 05

06

07

01

08

02

09 10 11 12

03

13 14 15

EXPLODED AXONOMETRIC VIEW

01

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– EXPLODED AXONOMETRIC VIEW 01. Shaped reinforcement plate in Cor-ten steel 02. Steel cladding 03. Metal cladding 04.

Cor-ten steel plate 05. Stone floor

02 110

06.

Slope screen in lightweight concrete 07. Insulating panel in polyurethane foam 08. Corrugated sheet 09. RC slab 10.

Cor-ten steel plate 11. UPN 400

03

12. HEB 280

———————————————————————————————— DETAIL OF PARAPET

05 06

40

15. Metal cladding

57

14. Plasterboard false ceiling

04

17

13.

Metal frame for plasterboard constructions

01. C or-ten steel pillar cladding 02.

Parapet in laminated extraclear glass

07

03.

Microcement floor 04. Sand-cement screed 05.

Lightweight screed 06. Metal L-section 07.

Cor-ten steel plate

DETAIL OF PARAPET

139

THE STAIR: RISING UP FROM THE WATER TOWARDS THE SKY

Marco Casamonti

The stairs between the floors play a fundamental role in the project for the Former Wine Warehouse in Trieste, connecting the building’s new floors. Normally, we start from the ground floor to “measure” and “count” the floors of a building. In this “classic” view, this architectural complex would have two underground floors, a ground floor, and a first floor, covered by a large sunroof. But, in this project, because of the unique architectural configuration plain to see in the cross-section, it is only truly accurate to call underground the parking level, which covers the lot’s entire area. The level above it, which is for services, could indeed be more aptly called under sea level, because, though it is not exactly underground because the land is kept at a distance by a gap that separates the building’s side from the ground. This lets a water channel be created that surrounds the building’s entire perimeter, which has completed glazed facades, including at this level.

“Ground floor” may also not be quite the right term for the entrance floor, raised 80 centimeters from the level of the Rive to protect the envelope from high tide. It could be more apt to call it a mezzanine or a loft as it overlooks a double volume in the building’s center to let natural light inside the ample main building. Four stair groups connect the floors: the two on the sea side are for safety exits and enclosed by walls clad with gilded mosaic; the two on the city side were designed as stairs for the public placed within a unified volume. Several Cor-ten steel staircases reflect within this triple volume in which water comes in through two large pools placed under the cantilevered stairs, and they expand and multiply like in a game of mirrors. The stairs contrast with the powerful refined simplicity of the building system and glass envelope, becoming an oxymoron imbued with dramatic monumentality, the basis of much of the entire building’s decorative system. The stairs are a fundamental part and key feature of the atrium.

Their purpose is like that of a theater foyer’s hypostyle hall, revealing and explaining right from the entrance how the building works right and crossing it like an architectural promenade. The use of soft, curving lines for the stairs’ appearance contrasts with the hard, even quality of the envelope, from which they show their independence and suggest with their flowing progression that the entire complex is floating in front of the sea.

142

PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF MONUMENTAL STAIRCASE

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WORKSITE JOURNAL

Marco Casamonti

The story of the construction and completion of the Former Wine Warehouse, now the busy site of the Eataly food and dining center, was an unusually long one; more than ten years came between its design inception, in 2006-07, and its opening in January 2017. This was true even though the Fondazione CRTrieste – the client and owner – was consistently actively engaged, which speaks to the complexity and difficulty of the work on this relatively small building.

Despite the support and cooperation of the agencies involved, debate around the project was long and complicated because of its strategic importance on the Rive and the former role of this building across from the old fish market, now an exhibition center. After the initial design idea, which involved demolishing the original building to make room for a conference center on the sea, the Superintendency asked that the walls built in the early 20th century be maintained or, at most, disassembled and re-assembled, keeping the old wall faces intact.

This required first consolidating the old dry-stone brick walls with cement injections, then creating a harness of metal cages to protect the walls, cutting it into individual segments with water saws and moving them from their location.

After the original building’s pieces were stored, we started building the continuous bulkhead of secant piles to build a reinforced concrete barrier to protect the underground levels at risk of being by infiltrated by sea water. The next stage was the excavation and insertion of temporary anchor tie rods.

The difficulty of excavating in the sea joined the problems of preserving the old walls and the difficulty of disposing of the excavated material. We should also remember that when the work started, we did not yet know the end user or the building’s exact purpose. The contract, therefore, had to be divided into two lots: one for the main structural work and the second for the facades, the roof, the building systems, and the architectural finishes in general. The project was later modified and adapted to Eataly’s needs after an agreement had been reached between the owner and the end user. Given all of these factors, the tenyear construction process, not always in full operation due to external factors, is much easier to understand.

Everything inside the building is meticulously designed, starting from the foundations conceived as a large platform made with the “white pool” technique that stops sea water from filtering inside the built volume, using a better technology safer from risks of defects caused by using traditional waterproofing. The parking lot, set below sea level, uses special ventilation grids placed above the 156

159 12 June 2006

164

28 dicembre 2010

165 28 dicembre 2010

166

167 8 febbraio 2011

PROJECT CREDITS

Location

Trieste, Italy

Program

Redevelopment of the Former Wine Warehouse

Built area

3.600 sqm

Timeline

1st lot: 2010-2012 2nd lot: 2015-2017

Client

Fondazione CRTrieste Massimo Paniccia, President

Project manager

Paolo Santangelo Assistant Architect Raffaella Paoletti

Architectural design

Archea Associati: Laura Andreini Marco Casamonti Silvia Fabi Giovanni Polazzi

Construction supervision

1st lot: F&M Ingegneria

Art direction

1st lot: Architect Marco Casamonti

Construction supervision, art direction

2nd lot: Architect Marco Casamonti

Assistant to construction supervision

Architect Alessandro Riccomi Architect Matteo Chelazzi

Safety coordinator in design phase

Architect Francesco Giordani

Safety coordinator in construction phase

Architect Federico Toso

Assistant safety coordinator in construction phase

Architect Claudio Visintini

Structural design

F&M Ingegneria Alessandro Favero, engineer Tommaso Tassi, engineer

Static testing

Marina Palusa, engineer

Technical-administrative testing

Giuseppe Stancic, industrial technical expert

Building system design

Studio Ti Ennio Menotti, engineer Roberto Ricci, engineer Devis Lombardi, industrial technical expert Claudio Fabbri, industrial technical expert

Architectural restoration consulting

Architect Rossella Gerbini

242

Contractor

1st lot: Riccesi Costruzioni 2nd lot: Gruppo Simeon, Riccesi Costruzioni

Cor-ten doors

Auroport

External doors and windows

Secco Sistemi Spa

Microcement floor

Ideal Work

Stone flooring

Pietra Santafiora

Terracotta roof tiles

Ceramiche Giuliano

Artistic glass cladding

TREND Group

Exterior lighting and atrium windows

LED Linear

Internal lighting and common areas

Martini Light

Interior lighting in Eataly retail area

iGuzzini

Elevators and escalators

Rimaco Ascensori

Monumental staircase

MAP carpenteria

Bathroom fixtures

Ceramiche Cielo

Cantilever roof and glass facade, burnished steel components

Simeon Structure & Facade System

243