BOLZANO. At “Noi” a new park is born. And many are preparing to stay there. “It is designed specifically to bring together transversal audiences, such as university students, families, researchers, entrepreneurs” says Roberto Busselli, architect. Like a portion of greenery poised between science and new citizens, ready to arrive in South Bolzano. It will be available shortly after the completion of the construction site which is, in turn, introducing the Institute of Biomedicine to the Tech Park.
Place of research among the most innovative. Surprisingly, the institute will not only find its place in the old modernist building that once housed the concierge of the large factories, on the west side of the technology park at the Via Volta roundabout, but will extend underground. Busselli, from the Busselli Scherer arkitekten studio, who guides the work, explains this: “On the floors above ground there will be offices but the laboratories are ready to enter”.
The “under” means at least a thousand square meters of surface. More than double the frame of the building above. Which has been kept in its original structure through a conservative restoration that will restore its fully rationalist identity.
Opposite, and here is the subsequent architectural intervention, the new park will extend. In addition to the portions already present in front of the Black Monolith and the restored buildings of the first industrialization of the area. Why was there previously talk of a meeting place between researchers and students? The reason is that, a few steps south from the building of the Biomedicine Institute, work is already underway for the construction of the new Engineering Faculty of the University of Bolzano.
At least 400 of students and teachers are expected. And the park that is being built between the faculty and the institute will constitute the Unibz campus, in its southern urban enclave. The constructive and even “political” horizon of the Techpark is therefore hanging, where we have been imagined not only as a laboratory of innovation and startups but above all as a meeting point between the world of research and businesses with, in addition, also that of studies.
And right in that corner of via Volta the park will constitute the architectural connection between these three worlds in dialogue. Because it is on dialogue that the park intends to justify itself. To justify a presence that has cost millions in terms of public investment. The Institute of Biomedicine and the Faculty of Engineering in turn will be a further element of attraction towards the Zone. Which will also be populated through the already planned construction of a series of student residences in the urban quadrants close to the Techpark.
Time of realization? For the Institute of Biomedicine and the adjoining park, the horizon is the end of the year. Engineering will be concluded later.