Varano de’ Melegari, Italy
From choices of materiality to attention to topography, Atelier Alfonso Femia / AF517’s Dallara Academy for the Dallara Group spares no detail in achieving a building suitable to the legacy of its client and his company.
For the project in Varano de’ Melegari, for engineer Giampaolo Dallara and his family, as well as his personal affections and his company, the architects found themselves in a unique situation that needed to be revealed through the project, both in the contest phase and in its construction.
In this way, it could successfully express the soul of a rare and exemplary story, which the architects believe belongs to many areas of the Mediterranean territory.
For its poetic attention to detail, Dallara Academy has recently been awarded a 2022 International Architecture Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
The site of the project is a locus of particular and significant landscapes.
The architects sought a dialog with the area, not wanting to propose artificial relationships that break with or contrast the ‘object trouvé’ within its context.
It is necessary to turn one’s gaze, to walk away from the area, to observe it from different points of view of its geography in order to understand its role and soul within the balance of nature that becomes landscape.
A delicate metamorphosis made of actions that confront the different natures of the territory was proposed: to contain, to host, to inhabit, to welcome.
The project lies on a soft hillside slope that opens to the valley of the Ceno stream, while behind it stands the profile of the hills, with a ‘rock’ at the top that stands as a presence monitoring and observing the site below.
The territorial elements with which the architects are confronted are therefore the seemingly horizontal surface of the lot, its ambiguous simplicity, the presence of a mulberry tree, green sentinel in dialectic with the rock, the profile of the hills, the agricultural system, the wide trace of the Ceno on the ground, and the small rural centers of the Apennines.
These are the contemplative elements of the landscape’s perception.
It is to these that the project refers to itself, in an intimate way, collective, representative, functional, recognizable, and simple.
The project is born in the same way the design process of Dallara is put in place, in other words, through the aggregation of phases anddistinct elements placed side by side in balance, spatially coherent with the nature, and the use of the spaces, which, assembled, constitute the project as a whole.
Dallara Academy is a complex that focuses its attention on the topography of the place, on its integration in the landscape, on its double perception (from the outside and from the inside), a place of research, projects, encounters, and excellence…
A building both fast and slow, silent, and sonorous, technological, and poetic.
The architects drew a landscape within the landscape, introducing a new public space, a catalyst for activities, capable of overturning the perceptive modalities of the area that are, to date, the movement of the cars, their speed, and the entertainment.
The architects placed the building at a slightly higher level than one of the streets, creating a first topography that defines its separation from the road and the academy.
A slightly inclined plane that characterizes the space of dialog with the location, defining a sequence of thresholds between the natural and the mineral landscape.
Project: Dallara Academy
Architects: Atelier(s) Alfonso Femia / AF517
Lead Architect: Alfonso Femia
Design Team: Lorenza Barabino, Alessandro Bellus, Luca Bonsignorio, Angela Cavallari, Simonetta Cenci, Marco Corazza, Chiara Frumento, Andrea Lucchi, Sara Massa, Enrico Martino, Vera Messana, Michela Scala, Ilaria Sisto, and Vincenzo Tripodi
Interior Design: Alfonso Femia AF* Design
Lighting: Alfonso Femia AF* design with Invisible Lab, and Silvia Perego
Services Engineering: FOR Engineering Architecture
Structural Engineering: Redesco Progetti
Museum Fitting Out: Atelier Alfonso Femia with Tapiro Design
General Contractor: Mario Neri SpA
Client: Varano Box srl. (Dallara Group)
Renderings: Paris Render Studio