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Brembo’s Research and Development Centre in the Kilometro Rosso Science and Technology Park near Milano.

Jean Nouvel’s Master Plan
The Science Park is a campus immersed in nature, characterized by a spectacular architectural stage made of extruded aluminum in “Kilometro Rosso red.”
The Red Wall conceived by Jean Nouvel runs along the highway. It is ten meters high, and one kilometer long. Most buildings within the Park are lined up perpendicularly against it. A Red Wall held up by a concrete and steel structure as a protection barrier for the park and the buildings against noise and car pollution.
The continuity of its laminated face is interrupted by large openings, shaped as the air vents in a car. These provide access for cars and people to the Park. Nouvel’s master plan reduced car travel within the area to a bare minimum and provided underground car passages to most of the buildings. The park is fenceless, allowing nature in.

The parking area along the highway
The presence of the Red Wall determines a clear cut separation between the park and the the A4 highway border. A parking area, 60 meters wide, acts as a kind of vast stage, running between the highway and the Red Wall. The red lines marking the individual parking spaces remind us of those on racetracks along the starting grid. Nighttime illumination is provided by fixtures normally used along airport runways.

Jean Nouvel’s architectural Project
The Research Centre is integrated in the Red Wall and expands to accommodate the main interior promenades. The Research Centre’s entrance is characterized by a cylinder, covered in steel, which is wedged into the Wall. It is a composition of volumes stretching out towards the Park. Its differentiated units look fragmented and cubist, blocks that hide and protrude in different directions.
Three different materials are used for the outside 1) the Red Wall sheet, which tells the site scale, 2) glass, symbol of administrative activity
3) silver metal coating for the top floor and the cylinder with its unique sensual lines.
These materials correspond to line, volume and free shape, each carrying a different message. There are four cantilevers, two on the South and two on the West which have been created using a structural solution combining concrete beam-walls with slabs made of steel.

Interiors and the Blast Architetti studio project
The building entrance, on the first floor, leads through a cylinder and reaches a place of transit, a decompression chamber which takes you to the various destinations. This is where the interior promenades, rue corridor, intersect, as if dug out of the Red Wall. They expand towards the Park along a curve, as if carried by a breath of air. The main rue corridor guides you Westwards along a winding path to offices and a conference room, completely jutted out of the main structure; Going towards the East le rue corridor connects the new building to the pre-existing SOM building.
There are two access bridges which connect the Wall to the long office-blocks on the first and second floors. The open-space research laboratories and the production spaces for prototype production are located on the ground floor.

Materials and color shades
In the entrance cylinder the internal surfaces are finished in bright white waxed plaster, the external cylinder is in concrete. The handrails and upper balcony structure are internally lit. Light shines in a warm colour at zero level, and becomes increasingly cold as one approaches the top floor creating a feeling of flow and movement. Oblique and rounded display niches are carved inside the lateral walls. They contain refined mechanical parts manufactured by Brembo. Inside the niches light can change its colour and tone, thanks to the built-in LEDs.
Numerous interior glass walls correspond to the exterior glass walls. The sensual surfaces prevail over architectural tectonics. Architecture becomes a series of planes. Their transparency, once stratified, leads to invisibility. As for chromatic tones, Blast works with grey nuances. Office floors are covered with a soft gray and black carpeting to absorb and neutralize noise. Built-in lights illuminate the vertical and horizontal surfaces. Direct light and colour are combined in the spaces of transit, to represent mobility. At night, the lights change the building to a unique luminous volume, a perfect mix of illusion and seduction.

Landscape project by Studio LAND
The project by Studio LAND covers the entire Kilometro Rosso Science and Technology Park. The LAND project considers Kilometro Rosso as a metaphoric tunnel of wind, “fluid element, against architecture’s stiff geometrics generating movement, waves, whirlpools and vortexes”. Whirlpools and vortexes are, if translated into reality, heaps of soft earth and reflecting pools inspired by English gardens. The ground is covered with ripples - small dunes to protect the internal viability. Woodlands are diminishing in logical progression, starting from the area closest to the Red Wall and then out towards the surrounding farm land.

based on text by Sebastiano Brandolini from the book “Brembo Center for Research and Development 2004-2007”

www.jeannouvel.com
www.blastarchitetti.com

Location: outside of Bergamo along the A4 Milan-Venice highway
Project: Kilometro Rosso Science and Technology Park
Total area: of 392,000 sq.m.
Total covered surface area: 90,000 sq.m.
Master Plan: Ateliers Jean Nouvel

Sub-Project: Brembo’s Research and Development Centre
Design: 2001 - 2002
Construction: 2004 - 2007
Type of commission: "shell & core"
Function: manufacturing and offices
Surface area: 10.700 sq m
Gross Floor Area: 28.000 m2
Budget: 28 896 103 €
Cost m2 usable area: 1 032 €
Project team architecture: ateliers jean nouvel
Interior design: blast s.r.l.
Structure: ced ingegneria s.r.l.
Town planning: studio rizzi
Landscape design: land s.r.l.