Filtering corso Porta Ticinese

After spending two years studying Architectural Engineering at Politecnico di Milano, it was of a great interest to focus on a project with great potentials. In fact, there was not a better project than the new addition to Diocesan museum since it gives the opportunity to implement new technologies within one of the most historical and important centers of Milan. It enables us to really absorb and understand the Milanese culture. As a Thesis theme for the Master of Science in Architectural Engineering, a project which has the potential for designing and developing in Architectural and Technological as well as structural aspects was more preferred. Therefore, the project of new addition to Diocesan Museum was selected for the same reasons. Furthermore, the availability of the site to visit, well-defined brief of the competition and familiarity of the project supervisors with the competition and the site of the project were the strong points which helped the final project through its realization and removal of the constraints. The project has been approached, on the urban scale, by acquiring the necessary knowledge about the history and the urban evolution of Milan in general and Corso Porta Ticinese in particular , leading us to a fair understanding of the particularity and historical significance of the area subject to study. However, since Milan is a living city, a conscious grasp of the contemporary strategic planning had to be done. Consequently, deep studies were carried out in order to investigate the ongoing plans and strategies for the metropolitan region of Milan as well as the neighborhood area around the site in the content of the PGT of Milan. From those ongoing plans, we can mainly mention “La Passeggiata Urbana dei Bastioni”, “Raggi Verdi” that had direct impact on the vision concerning the future aspect of the historical center of Milan. The architecture concept started with the contrast between the highly dense identity of Corso Porta Ticinesse and the urban void of Parco delle Basiliche. The guidelines of the project were directly obtained from the brief of the competition of “Concorso Internazionale di Progettazione Museo Diocesano” in terms of functional requirements and areas of the spaces. Since flexibility of the spaces in the exhibition buildings are out of an extraordinary importance, therefore the structural system which is chosen should be free of structural constraints and obstacles. Steel structures are always a good solution since it provides rather large spans in a covered space. Also a system of dry construction was preferred which reinforced our choice of structural system. Furthermore, despite the previous approaches concerning the seismic design severity in Milan, the latest unfortunate events proved that more conservative attitude should be taken into account. After studying the climate situation of Milan, it was obvious that a well-insulated envelope is the sine qua non of a thermal efficient building. Moreover, the typologies of the spaces required the application of both transparent and opaque walls. Since the brief was concerned about both energy efficiency and light control, a compromising solution between indirect natural lighting and artificial lighting had to be opted. Being constrained by providing sophisticated air conditioning systems in terms of specific controlled temperature, relative humidity and air quality conditions, an all-air system was obviously chosen.