Faber Industries S.P.A. Headquarters, Italian HQ Architecture, Office Architecture

Faber Headquarters Building in Udine

Italian Commercial Architecture Development: Offices – design by GEZA Architects

11 Sep 2015

Faber Industries S.P.A. Headquarters, Udine

Design: GEZA, Architects

Location: Udine, north east Italy

New Faber Headquarters Building

Two Landscapes
Faber Industrie Spa are world leading manufacturers of steel cylinders.
Their new headquarters are located at a boundary between an industrial area and farmland, and hence belong to both the industrial and the natural landscape. The aim of the project is to interface both landscapes and acknowledge their different qualities and values.

Two Volumes
The volume of the building is designed to “bring the two landscapes inside”, and integrate them in the new spaces. The building consists of two shifted longitudinal volumes linked by an entrance hall.

Two Open Courtyards
As a result, two “internal” open spaces are created, and controlled by views over the building and over the two landscapes. The designers here worked to obtain a reduced scale, i.e. the human scale, as opposed to the large-scale industrial area. While one courtyard is “hard”, lined with trees and conceived as a living area, the other courtyard is “soft”, entirely green and free, with an open visual depth eastwards, facing the manufacturing facilities and the mountains towards the Slovenian border.

The Section and Head Fronts
The notion of “double” is mirrored in the section, that is two “S” shapes. The corridor/office plan is inverted on the two levels: one totally blind side and one totally open side are overlapped, giving way to radically shifting open/closed fronts. The eastern head fronts of the office bodies actually highlight the S-section, while the western head fronts, where fire-exit stairs are accommodated inside wall panels, are closed and silent.

Two Materials
The notion of “double” permeates the whole design process, including the façade design.
The building is covered in a ventilated “skin” made of two materials, i.e. black concrete and black glass.
The prefabricated concrete walls and the glazed front cells alike are horizontal, 4 metres wide and 70 centimetres high. All elements are connected with the same method, i.e. 20 millimetres wide open joints. This gap element governs all installations of the front parts, groundline and skyline, horizontal and vertical separations, change in materials, and corner solutions.

The black skin of Faber building is a product of the designers’ research on abstraction. Although the building is about 100 metres long, it looks “small” as compared to other huge industrial plants. Thanks to the subtle nuances created by four different types of glass and five different types of concrete, the building maintains the rigorous shape and layout of an industrial facility. Then, it will not stand out from the context because of its shape, but only because of the lightness generated by one colour getting degraded as it relates with the surrounding grass, tarmac, manufacturing plants, the sky and the people.

Black concrete is also the main feature of the most important area inside the building: the entrance hall has a large black-on-black terrazzo floor, a “liquid” element helping mirror and connect the two green courtyards together.

Functional Specifications
The new headquarters cover an area of about 2,800 square metres above the ground, and of about 1,400 square metres underground. They consist of two longitudinal volumes, oriented east to west, with an overall width of 7.80 metres, and different heights and lengths. The two blocks merge through a central volume serving as hall/reception, waiting area and functional connection of all areas.
All open spaces are lined with hedgerows of black poplars, which serve as standing “landmarks” to match the front wall panels. The hedgerow contour alternatively moves towards the inner or outer boundary of the area to hide the car park or highlight the perspective views.

Faber Headquarters Udine – Building Information

Project Title: Faber Headquarters
Client: Faber Industrie Spa
Architect: GEZA Gri e Zucchi Architetti Associati
Site Area: 106.000 sqm
Gross Floor Area: 3.170 sq m
Location: via dell’Industria, 33043 Cividale del Friuli, Udine, Italia
Status: completed
Project start date: 2009
Cost: 6.000.000 €
Collaborators: Stefania Anzil, Chiara Marchetti, Tania Teixeira, Francesco Casella, Tina Carletti

Photographs: Massimo Crivellari

Faber Headquarters Building in Udine information / images received from GEZA Gri e Zucchi Architetti Associati

Location: Udine, Italy, southern Europe