Zaro Architects Face lift was extensive in scope. The team created several small floor plate additions to transform the building’s massing. Fortress-like, concrete facade panels and the entire service core were removed, exposing the building to its skeleton. The insertion of a new concrete core substantially improved the building’s seismic resiliency and enabled several additions, both horizontal and vertical. The abrasive function, which blocked the entrance from the street, was removed to create an open, light, and welcoming space that engages the community.

Downtown Recreational Area represents a synergy between aesthetic composition, inventive structural solutions, and integrated landscape design. The design elements actively contributes to the vitality of the city and the community as a whole. The project offers a new paradigm for how to convert an outdated, monolithic block into a work of innovative and inviting architecture.

The project born with the collaboration with a real estate developers company which has the aim of a renovation of the entire area of downtown, starting with the renovation of few palace and expanding the process.

The new building is designed to accommodate several coffee shop and small restaurants and bars on the ground floor and art gallery and cultural centers in the upper floors. A cantilever addition to the concrete structure will be used as a performance theater that flies over the square. The piazza will be the core of the intervention and of the interest of the project, will be used as outdoor area for the coffee shops and as a space for open air exhibition.