BRACCIALINI FRONT WALL

Italy Firenze 2022

The study of the Braccialini facade is inspired by the interpretation of the surrounding context in a contemporary key, favoring a continuous and light covering skin in modular rectangular terracotta tiles, attributable to the liveliness of the brand's bags. The project of this "skin" does not want to be configured just as a simple facade, but an exchange between design and form. The intent is to place a technologically simple, aesthetically light and innovative surface alongside the essential volume of the factory. The design solution thus appears very linear, but at the same time tends towards refinement in its overall appearance and in the details as if to pursue that material and chromatic research of textures and fine details proposed in the various Braccialini collections. The designed surface involves a double treatment of the shingles, where each is characterized by a ground surface and the opposite one with a lithos finish. This process determines a shade from a darker tone, for the rounded face, to a lighter one for the lithos one. We would like this skin to be not just a traditional screen, but a fluid, dynamic, scenographic and changeable mass according to different points of view. To achieve this objective, a covering was also studied in which the terracotta slabs, depending on their position, are rotated with respect to the vertical plane: this restores three-dimensionality to the facade which appears more massive when the shingles are closed and light when the elements they are more open. We have adopted a unique casing treatment both in the closing technology and in the finishing material in order to guarantee homogeneity to the overall image; a dynamism, which allows the theme of openings to be reinterpreted in a contemporary way, providing an adequate balance between opaque and glass surfaces, which determines the regulation of the flow of light between the exterior and the building. The facade is certainly a "manifesto", the most properly expressive and representative place of the functions that take place inside it, therefore this fluid screen reinterprets the freshness and vitality of the Braccialini brand. An analysis of the urban context, of local materials and in particular of the city of Florence led to the choice of terracotta as the covering of the envelope, to guarantee not only formal but also material coherence.In fact, terracotta can be traced back to the most significant architecture of Florentine buildings and beyond. When observing Florence, just think of the cladding of the fifteenth-century domes, from the Pazzi Chapel in Santa Croce to the dome of the Duomo. A material, therefore, rich in historical meanings, which remains particularly versatile today for the application of contemporary architecture. This eco-sustainable casing also offers high aesthetic performance and excellent technical performance, is stable and durable, such that it allows almost zero maintenance costs even over a long period of time (50-100 years). The terracotta in the Braccialini facade cladding visually represents on the one hand the continuity with the past, on the other it expresses an evolutionary flexibility of the product capable of responding to new and complex architectural applications.