Italian Living Culture

The Italian Living Culture is a masterplan characterized by two fundamental elements. The first is a strong integration with the landscape that respects the main features of the site, favoring the geometry of the land and using the existing access system. The second is given by the variable density that it sees, more in direct contact with the road that connects Ulan Bator with the airport, the denser newly built parts and the remaining urban development characterized by density that gradually reduces towards the areas destined for upper level residence.

The idea of ​​the new settlement is in fact characterized by the integration of two different landscapes. First, the most compact part of the city, an area intensely inhabited and designed for commercial buildings, residences and public spaces. The compact city represents the main access and becomes the orientation and attraction element of the area. Secondly, the lower density part destined to host villas of different sizes, each characterized by a private open space.

Between the two parts, an urban park of about 10 hectares that will become the functional junction between the two different environments, a place of integration and, at the same time, of distinction between the more urban area and the suburban one.

The strong element of innovation, compared to other areas of suburbanization that are being built around the big capital cities around the world, is precisely in the contiguity and proximity between these two environments. This contiguity will allow forms of integration between the two environments and the possibility, for those who will live in the low-density area, to benefit from services (trade, education, entertainment, etc.) that only the critical mass of the compact city can allow to guarantee and make it work. Each of the two cities – the low density one of the villas and the compact city – will have the possibility of living in a strong functional and symbolic autonomy, the park, the sports center, the large public buildings are the places where integration is possible and the communication between these two worlds.

The new settlement will face different climatic conditions. The snow, the green of the warm season and the red of the earth in the intermediate seasons are the three great backgrounds of color on which the new housing system is placed. The materials of the external coatings will take into account the different environmental conditions but also the different chromatic situations. The ever-changing landscape will ensure that the architecture will meet new and changing conditions in every season.

Precisely for this reason we have chosen to propose a non-mimetic architectural principle. The architecture is placed in the landscape leaving the possibility to appreciate its characteristics but clearly identifying its role. The new environment will be an inhabited landscape, a place where nature and buildings merge without overlapping, but each of which performs precise and distinct tasks.

The compact city is the central and representative nucleus of the new settlement. Its nature is to host the central places of the new community but also to be the representative showcase of a new way of living with respect to the flows that move between the airport and the city. The low-density city is composed of the Landscape Villas (Patio, Tower, Terrace and Mansion), located on the slopes of the relief, with wider open spaces, and the Garden Villas, located south of the settlement, more densely distributed and with a smaller property open space.