Barreca & La Varra is designing the two housing buildings in Cluster 5 of Unione 0, the first private lot of the MilanoSesto project, as part of the partnership between Hines and Prelios.

The two courtyard buildings delimit Unione 0 to the east, on the edge with Via Mazzini and the existent city, and to the north they overlook the bridge station square. Their identity is defined according to a classic tripartite volumetric scansion, already widespread in the iconic residential architectures of Milan’s 20th century, and each part establishes a precise relationship with the context: a transparent basement open to the city, a body that develops in height, regulated by metrics, which makes the project even more efficient and sustainable, and a crowning with set back, generated by the subtraction and retreat of volumes, which generates a new landscape that compares with the larger scale of the city of Sesto. Each flat has large loggias, in continuity with the domestic space.

“For us, this is a further opportunity to decline a design reasoning on residence and on the new housing demands that are confusingly emerging and that, put together, will produce a new domestic landscape that will characterise, in our opinion, the coming years and the Milan of the 21st century. The home of the future will be a flexible, changeable device, whose relationship with the outside world will be characterised by a complex and blurred boundary between private and public space” Gianandrea Barreca, Giovanni La Varra

Throughout the project, attention to environmental sustainability and energy efficiency will be fundamental, thanks to LEED® and WELL certifications, and the use of innovative materials in line with circular economy principles. The energy needs of the area comprising Union 0 and the City of Health and Research will be reduced by 30% compared to traditional systems, avoiding the emission of 5,500 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year, also through the use of renewable sources and the presence of green areas.

Excavation began in January 2022; the project was publicly presented in June 2022, and by the end of the year construction work will begin.