Design through limits : Piacenza, Italy

Piacenza is a city and comune in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Piacenza. Strategically the city is at a major crossroads at the intersection of Route E35/A1 between Bologna, gateway to eastern Italy, and Milan, gateway to the Alps, and Route E70/A21 between Brescia at the foot of the Alps and Tortona, where branches lead to Turin in the north, a major industrial city, and Genoa, a major coastal port. Piacenza is also at the confluence of the Trebbia, draining the northern Apennines, and the Po, the major waterway of northern Italy, draining to the east. Piacenza right from its foundation has been of vital interest to political powers that would control northern Italy, more than any other city there. Piacenza is, in fact the ideal venue for an initiative focused on architectural, urban and environmental problems, both for the size of its scenic, landscape, artistic and monumental wealth and for the wide range of case-studies available, as well as for its solid traditions in the building sector. Program was to interconnect the landscape, urban spaces and architectural design of library integration with towards positive energy. Urban planning was done by using the roman grid and tried to provide the facility spaces according to integrated, interactive and interscalar architectural –urban- environmental concept. While the Architecture design of Library we developed the brief by studying the libraries present in Italy and abroad with respect to number of books and area. Building physics chapter contains the comparison of weather data from Piacenza city and Climate consultant software. Technological Design Chapter contains the concept of towards positive energy, its application to Public Library Design with lighting analysis and energy requirements for building