the W A L L | Jasmine Ben Ali

The aim of this project is to give the town of Chiasso a new social, residential and commercial area that values the surrounding territory of the train station. Propiety has been divided into a public area and in a private part.

The residential building, with some commenrcial spaces on groundfloor, consists of a single massive building along the existing road, which has become the new main street to the train station. This road is partly covered so as to create a park designed by the new ‘city of culture’. This public part has the objective to broaden the socio-cultural area and concentrate it into a unique cultural heart of Chiasso.

The cultural building is positioned in line with the existing buildings of the train station. The cue is at the end of the new cultural area, forming a border, a wall.

The building’s façade appears as a prism of closed concrete walls, with the exception of one particular hole. The light is introduced through the side walls (short) and through skylights in the roof.

The residential building has shape similar to a comb that provides a well-defined front onto the road (reference axis in the area) and opens with the blocks to the Soldini district and the railway.

Now the whole area is located at the end of the pedestrian commercial path of Corso San Gottardo. The latter will have more to do with the Soldini neighborhood thanks to the walkway over the rail track that starts from the new cultural park and extends to the other side of the town.

Inside the cultural building there is a youth center with accommodation, a library, an art gallery, a café and an information point for the town of Chiasso, which extends to the boardwalk with a series of information panels about the history and the evolution of rail over this territory.

Temporary apartments are made up of essential spaces and are designed to accommodate people who work or study for short period in the southern Ticino area (Lugano and Mendrisio).

Façade of this building is completely open to the south, while to the north (towards the road) is closed.

His front that faces the rail tracks is porose such as a skin with its pores to absorb the city. This perception comes to us, through the composition as a whole, that rectangles which slowly meld together to become mass. The city is absorbed in its own limit, into this wall.