An office building built in the early 1990s has been entirely renovated to house a team of Zurich insurance, which owns the property.
The building, with a floor area of about 3800 square meters, has a double façade, two are the streets it connects with an inner courtyard used as green space and parking lots.
In addition to three above-ground floors with spacious terraces, there are also three very large basement levels that house archives and parking spaces.
The project mainly involved the renovation of the courtyard façade to give the building a new, more contemporary look and the upgrading of the terraces-some of which were transformed into green spaces also to comply with LEED principles, according to which the intervention was designed in order to obtain the LEED Gold certificate.
The renovation also involved the redesign of the interior work spaces with new movable partitions, finishes, fixtures and intelligent integrated management systems. The energy upgrading of the complex took place through the installation of new air handling equipment and a BMS system that manages the countless systems in place, a new indoor and outdoor lighting system that adjusts with occupancy and twilight sensors, and finally a photovoltaic canopy on the roof to recover energy consumption.
Particular attention was also paid to the escape routes: it was necessary to add a new emergency staircase designed as a unicum with the existing building, a complex shape that follows the sloping directions dictated by the building and the property boundary limits. It is an object made entirely of metal carpentry, as is the new canopy that with its bold character redefines the main pedestrian access, restoring identity to the building.
New elements were introduced on the building while maintaining the historical configuration: window frames were designed to complement the existing mechanized blackout shutters and give new expressive character to the façade, and finally a palette of colors and materials was redefined, as can be seen in the dark gray perforated metal sheets that make the building more eye-catching.
