Alfonso Femia / Atelier(s) Femia AF517
“‘Innovative’ is an adjective often used in the construction sector, almost a design mantra. For materials innovation is mostly technological, something very close to chemical interpolation and performance capacities. Companies work on expanding their range, on variations, and more rarely on true revolutions and/or evolutions. Developing new materials or reformulating existing ones, there are indispensable elements involved in the virtuous process of production and application, oriented towards the ecological efficacy of materials, especially in public works, for three years now, since the publication of the Legislative Decree on Minimum Environmental Credits. What is the motor of change? From the initial phases of any project, I assess the material that best expresses the architectural idea in relation to the site, its history, its time, its function. Even in the originality of each experience, it always has to interact with the changing light, the reflections, the shadows, different perceptions at different times of day, different days of the year. My objective is not the exception, disposable customization. I prefer dialogue with companies and clients to innovate and evolve, to rely on the supply chain of Italian know-how, which is unique in its capacities, versatility and competitive thrust. The material becomes a strict test of the project itself, because it confirms its role in relation to the architectural idea, its ability to control all the complex themes that are destined to emerge in the development of a work of architecture that shapes all the details in pursuit of balance, harmony, and hence beauty. For the Dallara Motorsport Academy, a complex with areas for training and museum display at Varano de’ Melegari, Parma, 2018, the high-performance prefabricated concrete panels produced by Styl-Comp with the TX Active photocatalytic system in cement (the latter by Heidelberg Italcementi) close the construction on the eastern front, producing a wavy pattern, a visual echo of the movement and flexibility of the whole project; and they are transformed, at the position of the large windows, into a filter that allows light to pass through. They are the result of dialogue and a challenge approached with Styl-Comp, with the aim of bringing prefabricated concrete back into architecture, in its contemporary evolution, just as we have done for ceramics, wood and glass blocks. This exclusive artifact in prefabricated concrete, thanks to the use of the photocatalytic cement component, activates a process of oxidation in contact with sunlight, and transforms part of the organic and inorganic harmful pollutants present in the air into innocuous compounds, inert salts that are washed away by rain and thus guarantee total lifetime cleanliness of outdoor surfaces, while helping to cleanse the atmosphere of smog.”
Photo Stefano Anzini
