Architectural Design Archive
Sown fields
"Sown fields" is a project developed around the idea of working in a large area without clustering the spaces being created, and instead spreading them and keeping a large area of the original field untouched, but not without purpose.

[About the project]
The project is located in Italy, inside the property of the food company Barilla, and right next to their headquarters and pasta factory. As such, it is surrounded by kilometers of crops, mainly growing wheat, which inspired its shape.
The project itself is a set of galleries. An appendix to the factory, it is built for the purpose of hosting and entertaining its visitors, as well as showcasing the latest works of the Barilla brand to them. For that purpose, the project contains a variety of indoor spaces, such as a conference hall, an art gallery, a gastronomic area, shops and workshops, while another portion of the project includes laboratories for research, as well as lodgings.
The galleries that make up the project are set up in a way that imitates the lines that divide the characteristic fields of the area, creating individual gardens in between them. All these gardens are free spaces that can be used for outdoors activities at any time, and that visitors are able to roam freely.
In order to include bigger spaces in the project, such as a conference hall, and greater heights without disrupting its main design, instead of growing above ground, the project grows underground. Due to the size of the project, it can afford long, soft slopes; like this, a second underground floor appears, without need for stairs or elevators. Most of this secondary floor is a double height space and as such it is illuminated by sunlight. Parts of it, though, such as the conference hall, are located under the garden space; to illuminate these areas, some of the gardens include skylights.
Due to the linear nature of the project, most of its walls are not fully closed, in order to enable visitors to cross from the galleries and into the gardens at any time.