Collective Housing by Collective Practice: The Inclined Condominium in Bergamo

In 1972 Bergamo municipality identified new areas within the city’s fabric to build public housing developments. In one of these areas a few years later was built a housing project called Terrazze Fiorite (Flower Terraces). The intervention was designed by four architects who in those years had co-signed several significant works in the city: W. Barbero, B. Ciagà, G. Gambirasio and G. Zenoni. These architects during the 1960s and 1970s had worked side by side as a group. Terrazze Fiorite is the result of this kind of collaboration. The housing intervention draws a new portion of the city through a low-rise, high-intensity settlement model with L-shape housing units, arranged around patios. The apparent banality of the intervention, however, conceals an interesting spatial expedient: the settlement pattern is placed on an artificial sloping plane obtained by a continuous and slight staggering of houses arranged one after the other. The slope becomes an opportunity to develop a landscape of uninterrupted pedestrian paths characterized by continuous variations, thanks to excavations that host lush gardens and squares or flat areas near the house entrances. A complex scenery to allow inhabitants a neighborhood sociability in different degrees, where everyone is free to live the space without any kind of barriers. The essay aims to offer, through worlds and original photographs, a point of view on this housing project highlighting the spatial links established among citizens, buildings, landscape and city. Cover image: Entrance door with informal green