Alessandro Arcangeli
Architecture & Complex projects
Students: Alessandro Arcangeli & Filippo Fiorani
Title: Agora
Studio: MSc1 Landmarks Studio
Semester: Fall 2016
Abstract: We take the street and we flip it, arranging in vertical all the spaces we walk through when we go for a stroll in town. We base our design on the connection within public and private spaces. The former will be distributed along the three dimensions of the tower, the latter will be literally re-invented: a new flexible working space, based on interactions between spaces and people, where shar-ing is the keyword: sharing services, workforce, ideas.
The grid sets the building free of its space and time.
From the city of Madrid, we access the tower arising on the new Spanish parliament, where the community decides for itself in a new form of free and collaborative democracy.From this political theatre we walk up to two squares that introduce the working spaces. Six modules of three floors, for different needs. These spaces stand on a struc-tural steel grid along which tools such as chairs, printers, tables and panels slide, being accessible by everyone. This space is conceived for young workers, startuppers, students, who have the possibility to rent a just a cheap table, enjoying the possibility of sharing the cost of com-mon services and more important: to meet other people, potential collaborators and teammates.If we keep climbing the tower we end up in the library, conceived as an ascent on big steps to the rooftop. In the boarding spaces we found the hologram rooms, where people can experience through holograms, and 3d projec- tions the spaces descripted in the good old books.On top of the tower we find what called the labyrinth: a space where people lose themselves and meet inside this monumental labyrinth of monoliths scattered on the square.
The whole building is conceived as a spiritual and social path, running from the crowded arena, to the spiritual, intimate, religious labyrinth.