An article by Stefano Boeri is published in Corriere della Sera about the new life of former branches of the Banca d’Italia, also presenting the redevelopment project of the former Bank of Italy building in Cremona, designed by Stefano Boeri Architetti.
The intervention involves the regeneration of the historic building, constructed in the 1950s based on a design by Luigi Vagnetti and decommissioned in 2009. The design principles combine, on one hand, a renovation that takes into account the value of the existing structure—fully respecting its strongly established character—and, on the other, the improvement of the building’s energy efficiency and its reconnection with the city. This is achieved through the creation of an internal green courtyard and the use of the external portico for collective functions—literally opening the building to interaction with the urban context.
“Without consuming land and while maintaining the maximum ridge height unchanged, the project has created five habitable floors by transforming the ground floor—open toward Piazza Stradivari—into the point of contact between the building and the city, thanks to a system of large glass walls parallel to the portico. Once again, we have observed how historically characterized buildings, conceived with a strong and rigid architectural language, are better able to accommodate changes in use than architectures originally designed to be flexible and open to new functions. One of the paradoxes in the history of European architecture,” writes Stefano Boeri.