La Zolla: architectural paradigm in commercial outskirts

Formal Purity in Urban Chaos

The new commercial building named La Zolla, recently completed by the michielizanatta.net studio, represents a bold statement of the need for a formal reduction of buildings in the peri-urban areas overflowing with signs and visual confusion.

Located along the Strada Statale 13 Pontebbana, which connects Treviso to Pontebba (UD), La Zolla emerges in a disorderly and chaotic context, characterized by a multitude of low-quality commercial buildings. In this landscape of visual competition, the intervention by Michieli and Zanatta stands out for its declaration of simplicity and formal purity among various architectural projects.

An ambitious project

The project was initially commissioned by a company from Turin as an investment, and then completed by the company Marwincar srl. With this new intervention, the company doubles its presence in Udine, consolidating a history of successes in the Pordenone area.

Nestled between two commercial buildings, La Zolla extends over a rectangular floor plan of about 40 meters in length and 19 meters in depth, spread over a single above-ground floor for a total area of approximately 740 square meters. Inside, it houses commercial offices, a showroom, a vehicle maintenance space, and technical areas for staff.

An architecture of essentiality

The design idea by Michieli and Zanatta is to create an architectural object that represents the ground zero of formal articulation. This choice starkly contrasts with the abundance of signs and visual information in the surrounding context. The challenge is to achieve recognizability through the absence of clamor.

The compositional gesture is elementary and ancestral: an excavation that extracts a clod of earth from the ground, ideally suspended from the earth, under which commercial activity unfolds. No writing, no light, no ornamentation, just a volume in its pure materiality.

Materials and Technical Solutions

The Zolla is made of concrete, characterized by a processing with vertical matrices that imitate the roughness of the terrain, accentuating the sense of extraction from the ground. The concrete is then tinted with a veiling that gives it an additional material and imperfect effect. This massive volume rises from the ground thanks to a continuous glass facade that, by cutting it irregularly, frees the volume and suspends it. The roof covered in synthetic grass reinforces the idea of the sod.

Internally, the commercial offices overlook the car exhibition space. The entire environment is intentionally left "raw," with smooth concrete floors and ceilings painted in burnt Sienna earth. A large window creates a visual relationship with the canal behind, seeking a connection with a nature that, although anthropized, softens the context compromised by man.

A New Perspective Experiment

The La Zolla project was conceived as an experiment to look at the territory in a less aggressive and overbearing way. Michieli and Zanatta acknowledge the limitations and inconsistencies of their work, seeing it as a reminder for further developments. Their goal remains to create an authentic sod, using technologies aimed at visual, technological, and environmental sustainability.