The new shopping complex “Italmark” in Castel Goffredo (MN) was created with architectural and urban characteristics such as to make it a real gathering place, strategically located between the historic center, the school pole, the swimming center and the new residential neighborhoods. It is an architectural work which, with its 20,000 square meters of retail space, 3,400 square meters of covered galleries, 615 parking spaces of which 290 covered, represents an interesting design challenge, especially for the need to reduce the impact on the Urban web, integrating in the best way with the historical, economic and social development in the town of the Mantua province.
The project, created by Studio Rodighiero Associati of Castiglione delle Stiviere (MN), is strongly characterized by a dome and a fully glazed gallery, located at the public pedestrian pathways. The dome covers a veritable indoor piazza, which retrieves the old concept of the agora’ as a place of gathering and exchange, also in a commercial sense. The gallery, however, ‘sizes’ the volume diagonally, giving the building a high dynamism, based on a thorough formal simplification. Through the gallery, a community use axis of connection, one can also walk from school to the swimming center. Even the parking lots, placed by convenient ramps on three levels, are involved to this strategy of integration with the urban context, creating different opportunities for access that make independent and autonomous the various parts of this multi- purpose building, which articulates in four floors.
Particular attention was finally placed on reducing the impact on the environment in an energetic sense, by appropriate technological devices, such as the adoption of low temperature systems, the use of infill insulation and ventilation, and control exposure to the sun on the glass surfaces.