Sense by MACO brings adaptive intelligence to smart homes
Sense by MACO is a wireless sensor system that monitors when doors and windows are opened or closed. Keeping pace with the most contemporary home automation, it offers an unprecedented level of interoperability and adaptability to be easily installed on existing systems.
The building programme is designed around its distinctive location in an inner-city area serving mixed purposes. The architecture sets out to respond to this potential multiplicity. The buildings are constructed over 6 levels and are combined into double-height structural units (H = 7 mt.). Each unit has an open-space design with an internal mezzanine offering maximum three-dimensional flexibility to serve an array of uses: lofts, offices, shops, restaurants and businesses will find spaces ready to be custom-designed to their specific needs. Versatile mixed usage culmi¬nating, on the roof, in a flat roof-garden and inner-city squares in the elevation affording views across the horizon.
Energy: an overall vision guided the design strategy to produce architecture cleverly coordinated with plant-engineering, so as to obtain maximum energy efficiency. Geo-thermal exploitation of ground water; interior comfort based on radiant panels in the ceiling and optimum ventilation; materials put to pure usage: glass, wood and even greenery (treated like an architectural material) are envisaged as they will evolve over time; there is even smog-consuming self-cleaning cement used for all the plaster work and exposed masonry to reduce pollution in the immediate vicinity (a local contribution to the general quality of the environment). A sustainable approach but not a recipe which can be repeated because it derives from a custom design for this distinctive construction in this specific location.
Iconicity: a seamless façade on the outside, almost as if to provide protection against the “harshness” of the urban surroundings, links together the buildings into a smooth strip of solids and spaces. This creates a white orthogonal web, out-of-scale in relation to the heights between the various levels, which envelops and engulfs the transparent glass and wooden structures: an independent objects creating a new urban scale to how the building is perceived.
Tortona 37, multi-purpose complex (laboratories, offices, showrooms, shops etc.)
via Tortona 37, Milano
Design: Matteo Thun & Partners, Luca Colombo
Client: Pioneer Investment Management SRG Spa
Total building area: 30.000 m2
Project: 2003
Realization: 2009
This villa frames nature as a work of art
The natural setting becomes an integral part of the design in this house, where ERCO's signature large windows let in light and vegetation, creating a continuous dialogue between inside and outside.