Terzo Palazzo Ex-SNAM Offices: A Catalyst for Affordable Housing and Urban Regeneration in San Donato Milanese.

This paper addresses a masters’ thesis project for adaptive reuse of the listed “Terzo Palazzo SNAM” office building, designed by Franco Albini and Franca Helg with Antonio Piva and Marco Albini (1973). The building is part of Metanopoli, an unusual urban development carried out by ENI in San Donato Milanese. The 40,000 sqm building, surrounded by greenery, features striking horizontal red façades with aluminum ribbon windows separated by curved polyester resin surfaces. The cruciform plan is accessed under a metal canopy, and its central atrium houses Albini’s polygonal staircase. Currently abandoned, the municipality seeks its conversion into a mixed-use housing project to revitalize the area. Milan faces a housing crisis, caused by a gap between growing housing prices and rents and stagnating incomes. Additionally, in San Donato Milanese, housing typologies are stuck in the 1970s, with large, underused apartments, unsuited for the new unconventional households. The adaptive reuse of Terzo Palazzo into affordable unconventional housing is a masters’ thesis project in Architecture and is part of the PRIN research project UAH! led by Politecnico di Milano, to offer new housing insights as applied research by design. While preserving the building’s structure, facades and identity, the interiors will be reimagined through natural light and space to accommodate a complex program of public functions, multiple layers of shared and collective spaces, and private flexible units, designed to respond to a variety of unconventional households and create targeted affordable dwelling solutions. New recessed balconies, interior vertical voids, glazed communal spaces and private spaces that face both outside and inside the building will generate quality spaces and will foster a sense of community. The paper will address the incorporation of public functions in the –1 floor of the building, which will be exposed through urban slopes and stairs. These public services, such as an auditorium, a fitness center, a dance hall, shops and catering services are open to the outside, facing directly the new public spaces such as the Metro square, the green hill auditorium, the lake, the food court. Additional neighborhood services for healthcare and education are placed in the core of the building and accessible from outside and inside. All these functions will give a hybrid and urban character to the building and will create a new centrality for the city. New urban axes will give stronger connections to important neighboring areas and will strengthen the building’s program. The apartments typologies will be explored and detailed in terms of answers to unconventional needs of residents who have different ways of living, together or alone. Working on existing needs, the new housing units will be targeted towards autonomous seniors living alone or in couple, students and young professionals, people linked to Eni and San Donato Hospital with need for temporary housing, and intergenerational households with diverse lifestyles. The units are designed with flexibility, adaptability and affordability in mind, to accommodate changes over time. In this thesis project Terzo Palazzo will provide the city with a new well-connected centrality, highly needed public functions, and innovative strategies for unconventional affordable housing, preserving the past for the future.