Roma, Italy
The new Ministry of Environment and Energy Security (MASE) headquarters is the result of a multidisciplinary collaboration between a-fact, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), IDEAS (structure), Michel Desvigne (landscape), Atelier Ten (sustainability), and TEKSER (MEP). Together, the team delivers a forward-looking vision for contemporary public architecture, where sustainability, innovation, and resilience converge in a design that looks boldly to the future.
Located in the heart of Rome’s EUR district, the building establishes a dialogue with one of Italy’s most significant examples of rationalist urban planning. By reconstructing the perimeter of the urban block and reinforcing the district’s original axes, the project strengthens EUR’s monumental identity while reinterpreting it through a contemporary architectural language.
The proposal balances historical continuity and environmental performance. Rather than mimicking the context, the design adopts a layered strategy that acknowledges the rationalist legacy while addressing contemporary environmental, spatial, and social demands. Nature and technology are integrated throughout the building, combining passive and active strategies to optimize energy performance, reduce environmental impact, and enhance user comfort, creating a fully responsive and adaptive institutional environment.The Flexible Bar: Maximizing Natural Light and Adaptability. The workplace is organized around a 14.5-meter-wide flexible bar module, shifting structural columns to the perimeter to create large, column-free spans. This enables total adaptability, accommodating everything from cellular offices to fully open-plan workspaces, while maximizing natural light throughout the interior.The building is articulated as a series of elongated bars arranged along the perimeter and enclosing a central courtyard. Terraces between the bars introduce visual breaks, provide outdoor spaces, and reinforce the connection between interior and exterior environments.
Work Zoning and Social Spaces. A network of bridges connects the bars and functions as collaborative hubs. By concentrating social spaces within these connectors, interaction areas are separated from focused work zones, ensuring efficient, interruption-free work environments while promoting exchange, collaboration, and informal encounters. The courtyard and terraces further enhance this hierarchy, offering light, landscape, and moments of pause within a dense institutional program. A Civic Model for the Future. Conceived as an open and inclusive institutional building, the MASE headquarters becomes a point of convergence between government, environment, and society. Through architectural clarity, spatial flexibility, and environmental intelligence, it redefines public architecture as an active agent shaping a sustainable, resilient, and forward-looking civic culture.
Client:
MASE
Location:
Roma (IT)
Size:
30.000 sqm
Program:
Workspace
Status:
Competition
Year: 2024
Visual: SOM
Project Team: a- fact architecture factory, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), IDEAS (structure), Michel Desvigne (landscape), Atelier Ten (sustainability), and TEKSER (MEP)
