Ex glass factory Bit Vetro

Putignano, Italy

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Ex glass factory Bit Vetro

Putignano, Italy

Firm

Giuseppina Turi + Wanessa Bruno

Type

Cultural › Cultural Center
Industrial › Laboratory

STATUS

Built

YEAR

2013

The association LIBERA, that fights against mafias, sets up in Puglia LIBERA IL BENE, a project destined to Apulian towns for reuse and management of stolen assets to organized crime.

A building like an organ: a brain in which the neurons are able to receive, integrate and transmit impulses to understand the division between the inner and outer world in order to improve the prospect of observation and interpretation. The network made by these elementary units, as a texture, wraps around the building, from the roof garden and through the openings of facade, gets inside becoming the shell shaping craft workshops and exhibition space.

The main front reveals a part of the inside uses. The building is on four levels. An archive, a storage and technical rooms are in the basement. The ground floor is developed along a longitudinal axis; on the left side there are a front-office, a training room and craft workshops, on the right one facilities and vertical connections; in the middle there is the exhibit area: a path for the entire length of the building to emphasize the osmotic relationship between inside and outside.

In the entrance hall this path is shaped by metal movable panels which divide the hall from the staircases and, at the same time, expand the surface of the hall itself. On the back, the path is characterized by installation of mobile wings that transform the spaces for different uses: they create surfaces and boxes.

Close to the exhibition there are workshops, characterized by sliding panels that can divide or define an unique and multifunctional area. A sunlight system made by tubular skylights connotes this space and ensures their daytime lighting, reducing power consumption and allowing a better thermal control.

The first floor covers a smaller area than the one below: here the offices for specialist advice and a little conference room overlook a large common area where a metal staircase leads to the roof garden.

A slight pergola overlaps with the pre-existence, denoting not only the top of the single urban front of the building, but also improving the energy performance of the same; it protects the roof, reducing the daily and seasonal temperature and more, increasing the thermal and acoustic insulation and limits air pollution by trapping fine particles. This technological element becomes support for renewable sources (photovoltaic and solar thermal), helping the use of “traditional” technological systems.