ABSTRACT
Designing a tall building is a challenge in which the project constraints tend to strongly limit the architectural solutions. Tall buildings represent a challenge where it is possible to test and tune specific solutions and multiple variations of the same problems. Above all, a tall building is an exercise of precision, in which the building is like a machine, and where every component of the building needs to work in an integrated way in order to achieve its maximum performance. In the Citylife tower RdD1 in Milano, designed with Eduardo Souto de Moura, the exercise of precision in the engineering design process is taken to its limits. Inspired by Italo Calvino’s “Six Memos for the Next Millennium” – lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, multiplicity and consistency – we try to explore and interpret each of this characteristics in the design of a building, within an integrated design process, using Building Information Modeling (BIM). The final result is a sustainable project that is economically competitive, structurally rational and that at the same time meets the client and the architect’s expectations.
