The need for an overall architectural reconfiguration of the area of the former Consorzio Agricolo di Lecce responds first and foremost to the urban logic connected to the concept of urban regeneration, to be understood in its broadest sense, as a strategy aimed at the valorizations of disused (or functionally compromised) areas and land through their transformation and reorganization, the final outcome of which guarantees the best balance between the social, environmental and economic interests of the parties involved, while promoting quality and urban sustainability.
Moreover, the project proposal intends to provide solutions to the questions triggered by the re-functioning, in progress, of the neighboring complex of the Ex Tabacchi Orientali, both for the related quantitative retrieval of urban standards, and for a new and more rational organization of road and pedestrian flows within the area itself, aiming at an overall valorization of the context and, consequently, at the increase of the real estate values of the buildings.
The area in which the area of the Ex Consorzio Agrario is inserted is the same one in which the volume of the Ex Tabacchi Orientali is actually framed: the quadrilateral delimited by the rods of Via Gallipoli, Via P.B. Realino, Via di Ussano, Via Quarta.
The proposed courtyard architecture has strong analogies with the building type that defines the historic fabric of Lecce. On the ground floor, the polygonal pattern of the high glass walls defining the commercial spaces strongly connotes the spatial character of the commercial plate.
The irregular design also ensures adequate lighting for the central space of the courtyard, while the extension of the projections of the perimeter cornices of the volumes on the ground floor, which will be characterized by green roof type solutions with suitable essences, ensures a certain privacy for the residential loggias that develop above.
The same green roof treatment is intended to be extended to the commercial body built adjacent to the Casa della Carità volume and also to the service pavilion conceived between the courtyard building and the multipurpose square tangent to Viale Gallipoli.
The views to and from the commercial courtyard are mediated by suitable visual filters created by means of brise-soleil panels, which give the façades and the internal breakthroughs a certain rhythm synchronized with the architectural movements of the wall openings, as is also the case for the external façades.
For the residential floors, the distribution to the three levels and to the residential units is ensured through two vertical distribution cores and through a system of large loggias leading to the entrances, ensuring adequate lighting, shading and natural ventilation, as well as a certain privacy to the units themselves.
The cut and configuration of the units have been conceived to respond with a certain flexibility to the different demands of the real estate market.
All the units, therefore, have a double facing, towards the loggia and the central courtyard and towards the outside perimeter.
In the relationship between public and private space, between vehicular and road accessibility to the street level, between the best functional mix and the need to give the buildings an aesthetic and unified character, the greatest convenience was sought in terms of adequacy and conformity to the residential and commercial standards in use today in collective architecture, thus seeking to optimize the volumetric availability derived from the building indices offered by the urban regeneration program without renouncing an ambitious architectural program.