Team: Acale SRL, Alessandro Moriconi, Ing. Alessandro Balducci, Relevo SRL, ArcheoLAB

Place: Fabriano, Ancona

A DYNAMIC DISTRICT

In the industrial outskirts of Fabriano, where identity fades into functionality, a once-forgotten building is reborn — not just reused, but reimagined.

This project transforms a former training facility for firefighters into a dynamic and sustainable headquarters for the local police force. What was a silent concrete box becomes a radiant landmark, merging civic duty with architectural ambition.

The design strategy embraces adaptive reuse as a conscious act of urban sustainability — a refusal to waste space, energy, or memory. The existing structure is preserved and upgraded, wrapped in a new skin of perforated panels that echo the earthy tones of Fabriano’s historic bricks, creating a dialogue between tradition and innovation.

A vertical extension rises from the old, not in conflict but in harmony — a steel-framed, three-level volume that introduces new functions and new rhythms. These are not just offices and dormitories, but habitable infrastructure — where light, air, and nature are designed into every experience.

Microperforated panels slide with the sun, casting shadows that shift through the day, animating the façade and enhancing thermal comfort. They are tools of performance — regulating light, air, privacy, and acoustic comfort. The building breathes, shields, and glows — a semi-transparent lantern by night.

The dissipative towers, often hidden or disguised, are instead celebrated as sculptural elements, seismic reinforcements shaping courtyards, guiding flows, and offering identity.

Photovoltaics, green walls, natural ventilation, and moveable shading systems converge to create a near-zero-energy architecture — not as a futuristic ideal but as a real, buildable present.

Functionally, the building separates public and operational flows with clarity and purpose, while spatially, it reclaims a forgotten part of the city, turning isolation into a new civic center. The balconies, gardens, and vertical greenery reconnect the building to its urban ecosystem, inviting life to grow vertically, literally and symbolically.

It is an act of urban repair — a prototype for peripheral regeneration, a bridge between structure and story, duty and dignity.