Modern, sustainable and able to communicate with the territory. New trend for logistics with the new Trecate hub designed by The Blossom Avenue Partners

The Blossom Avenue Partners, an urban planning and architecture office specializing in the design of innovative, sustainable and territorial regeneration complexes, sets the rules for the evolution of the logistics warehouse and designs the new logistics hub in Trecate in the Novara area, one of the largest in the 'Italy. Building for logistics, inventing a project for a high visual impact and large extension function can be an important stimulus for declining two paradigms on which architecture must always work: innovation and lightness.

The studio has overturned the point of view on the project, with a very personal architectural approach: the composition was born by articulating two systems of volumes, not only the buildings in the center of the area but also its contours, considered as a continuous, dense green volume , tree-lined. Two volumes that have a dialogue with the landscape. A system of horizontal lines with which the composition of the project entered into dialogue: by designing two buildings that find their peculiarity precisely in the accentuated horizontality, and which they enhance by coloring themselves in dark gray, just lightened by the steel profiles.

Reading the construction systems speaks to us of lightness. Only the structural skeleton is traditional: beams and pillars in prefabricated reinforced concrete, to cover such a large built space with wide lights. The skin of the buildings is very light and at the same time capable of guaranteeing new performances: a system of sandwich panels, composed of two thin skins, one external and one internal in aluminum, but with the true core of the panel at the center, an insulating package that guarantees relevant energy performance.

The support on the ground is just as light. The interaction with the subsoil is limited to the foundation plinths under the pillars, which only go deep for about one meter. No other element disturbs what lies beneath the buildings: only the industrial floor covers the ground, asking it to continue living below, without interference. The rainwater that is collected from the roof, comes down in sight with pipes inside the building to its foot, and externally is collected and conveyed into the natural rolling tanks, created in the green areas.

The roof is a soil reproduced at high altitude, a world full of innovation and sustainability: the most used surface is destined to photovoltaic panels, arranged in excess of the legal requirements to qualify the buildings at the highest level (Platinum) of LEED certifications. The interior of the buildings tells of the innovation that the automation of goods storage and handling processes has now achieved. Conveyors, belts, storage areas, computers and robots create a highly specialized work environment, in which operators find themselves working in conditions of environmental comfort guaranteed by the extension of the heating and cooling systems, by the careful design of the lighting, from fire prevention systems.

A light and sustainable project, to bring back and recreate on site those resources that the site itself consumes. Not only does it not waste water, recovering it, conserving it, bringing it back to the groundwater, but it produces as much energy as it consumes and brings back 80,000 square meters of free wooded areas. A continuous exchange with the environment allows the new hub to be sustainable, resting on a soil that does not contaminate and integrated into a landscape with which it communicates, every day.

Ph. Giovanni Santarelli D’Arcangelo