Brembo Research Office

Brembo Research Office in Bergamo, Italy by Jean Nouvel

Last week's dose featured German car-maker BMW's attempt at creating an image for itself through architecture, not a novel idea. Coop Himmelb(l)au used computer technology to design what might ultimately become a dated design more attuned to its process (computer) than its content (car). In contrast, Jean Nouvel's design for the automobile brake-manufacturer Brembo's Research Office and Workshop in Bergamo, Italy uses its location, alongside the Milan-Venice Highway, as an opportunity to create a strong image that responds directly to a car's horizontal movement.

Selecting the site for its visibility to drivers between Venice and Milan, Brembo's physical identity will use its trademark red, in this case a one-kilometer long wall which also acts as a sound barrier to the offices and other uses on the other side. The wall, made of grooved, lacquered aluminum, will appear to extend into the horizontal parking surface on the highway side. By locating a parking podium between the moving cars and the red wall, Nouvel has attempted to mediate between the highway and the office that are reached by piercing through the wall.

The aerial view at left (click for expanded view) illustrates the various parts of the development, including the red wall and parking podium, the approach road, the pond, and the offices integrated into the landscape beyond. The architects decision to locate office spaces beyond the wall - and the wall itself - ironically recognizes the automobile by stifling its physical effects. Therefore the Research Office acts as a symbol of the company who manufactures parts that attempt to lessen an automobile's destructive impact, hopefully allowing the driver to stop before hitting another car, for example.

In contrast to the colorful, yet bare highways side of Brembo's Bergamo facility, the office buildings are transparent and integrated with trees and other landscape to create an oasis apart from the speeding cars. Reminiscent of Nouvel's earlier Foundation Cartier in Paris, landscape is treated as a zone between the building and the greater urban condition. In the former the condition was the streets of Paris, in the latter the condition is the roads connecting cities. So in turn the landscape plays a greater role in the building's design, a commendable offset to the image-oriented facade of the trademark Brembo-red wall.