Solar system - research center in Varese, Italy

Architectural Review, The, Sept, 1996 by David Petrus

A simple device brings coherence to a formerly chaotic collection of huts which house the Joint Research Centre of the EC and at the same time greatly increases the energy efficiency of the whole complex.

The Ispra site of the Joint Research Centre of the Commission of the European Communities at Varese in Italy was scarcely an advertisement for the aims of the organisation. The headquarters of the EC's most important centre for investigation of the environment was a set of energy-leaking airconditioned sheds. In 1993, the centre decided to do better and held a European-wide competition to evolve a strategy which would make the buildings more thermally efficient, and set an example of how to deal with thoughtless Modernist buildings of the '60s end '70s.

Mario Cucinella Architects (with Ove Arup & Partners) won the prize for converting and adapting most of the buildings. Their proposal was very simple: a large pergola would give visual and spatial coherence to a raggly collection of linked huts, and provide shading which would reduce solar gain; insulation would be given to existing roofs and a general programme of opening, rather than sealing the spaces would be instituted.

The cooling canopy is made of a galvanised steel structure made of (slightly adapted) ordinary rolled sections which support laminated timber louvres that are set at 45 degrees to cut down insolation and make a framework over which creeping plants can ramble to give the place a shaggy summer outer coat which by its shading effect and transpiration will reduce the temperature of the sheds. (Fallen leaves in autumn will be a problem that will have to be coped with, and may be a serious difficulty with the whole approach.)

Revision of the internal climate of the sheds has been made possible by providing opening lights and using convection to generate through-draughts. The mensa deserved a more complicated treatment: daylight was needed at the back of the spaces. Here, sky chutes have been provided that both let light in, and act as thermal chimneys. They poke up through the laminated wood ribs and are lined with mirrored plexiglass to enhance the intensity of light that is projected downwards.

The energy-payback cost analysis suggests that the new works will justify their construction in only 18 years. The pergola has added dignity and worth to a set of sheds. It does so economically and adds a precious degree of thoughtfulness about the nature of human beings as they relate to the natural world, and each other. Cucinella has plainly learned much from his time with Renzo Piano, and begins to suggest how thoughtful, ecologically aware architecture might be made acceptable in Italy, and start to help a nation's building where figure has for too long been more important than propriety.