FPA Franzina + Partners Architettura

IT Tower is a multifunctional building, with prevailing hotel surface, whose design is entirely made in Italy. The tower interacts with atmospheric conditions using renewable energy and interior natural ventilation. Energy consumption is considerably reduced due to three factors: the irregular ribbon volume that envelops and protects the tower from sun lighting, the double skin shell and the internal spatial distribution. IT Tower design shows externally its internal functional distribution and reveals itself as a stratification of overlapping elements: - the most articulated element is the dynamic perimeter ribbon: it has a structural function and includes vertical connections and technical spaces. At ground level, the ribbon creates a volume, then it grows up to the top of the tower where it becomes the roof, than it goes down on the opposite side, ending as platform; - the suspended volumes have their horizontal floors hanging on two long deep beams. All the shelves have double skin protection with variable section and axle spacing brise-soleils; - the sticking-out glass boxes, simple parallelepipeds fitted between volumes, are dedicated to special uses. In every hotel room, the entrance's axis divides the bathroom in two glass boxes, one more private, hidden by the wardrobe volume accessible from the room, the other one with sink and shower. The bed occupies the middle of the space and faces the big facade window where there is a bathtub that allows also the heat dissipation due to high external sun-lighting. The suites, inside sticking-out glass boxes, have minimal furniture and the internal space is divided only by bathroom volume or by translucent sheets. Engineering design aims to integrate lighting sources and architectural volumes.