Edificio Plurisio COOP
Edoardo Detti was known mainly as an urban designer in the Florence school. He was active throughout the 1960s and 70s doing urban planning projects and remained mostly unknown in his architecture career.
Detti's design for a multipurpose office building and residence is located in Sesto Fiorentino, a suburb just outside of Florence's historical center (about an 11 minute train ride). Detti treated this development as a microcosm for his urban design ideals in order to connect the building to the city.
History of the Sesto Fiorentino
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Sesto Fiorentino is a Western suburb of Florence with a more working class population. The buildings are stylistically similar to those in the city center but it has more low rise development.
Detti was involved in the preliminary plans for this suburb as well as others in the surrounding area. He encouraged development towards the Northwest in Sesto, Prato, and Pistoia.
Detti’s main goal was to create a management center to house public functions for the city in order to take infrastructural pressure off the historic center. The plans Detti laid out for Florence were different from the radial strategies of urban development made popular by Ebeneezer Howard and Bruno Taut. Instead, Detti used “ribbons” of infrastructure to reach outside of the historic center, focusing development along those corridors.
Residential Facades
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The northwest face of the building looks towards a garden just off of a pedestrian walkway. Originally, the entire building was raw board form concrete, but it has since been painted a gray color, probably to prevent the concrete from weathering. On this side of the building there is also an addition of colored paint that is not original building.
The Southeast side of the building faces another pedestrian walkway. Divided from the street by a low wall, the first floor is pulled back, creating a second street within the footprint of the building. Businesses make up the first two floors, a division which can be observed from the outside with different window typologies.
Although the garden is divided from the walkway by a low wall and several gates, it is actually a semi-public space. Each of the walkways along the short sides of the building run through the garden between the two pedestrian walkways on the northwest and southeast sides. There are also reportedly community meeting rooms underneath the garden that are available for anyone in the town. It is unclear from available drawings if Detti designed all of the garden furniture, but he was certainly involved in some of it.
Small Urbanisms
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Detti made sure to apply ideas from his urban planning work into his architecture, which is particularly obvious in the COOP complex.
Because the programming needs of the buildings are so vastly different, Detti had to separate the volumes based on client needs. In order to keep the buildings better engaged with the city fabric, Detti also pulled the buildings apart at their connection points both to each other and the existing building on one side. These became corridors that allowed the building to be more porous and accessible to the general public. Much like the "ribbons" of his urban planning, these corridors are what the building infrastructure builds off of.
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Detti also used his urban design background to provide for the needs of the building residences with his inclusion of the two business floors. The post office, bar, grocery store, and other local offices cater to the daily needs of residents. Theoretically, if the building were to exist in isolation, it might even be able to sustain itself.
Influe​nces
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Detti was a contemporary of Carlo Scarpa and Leonardo Savioli and was definitely influenced by both architects’ styles.
On the facades, Detti uses the same language of pushing and pulling square volumes in and out of the main façade plain. Additionally, Detti used a similar roof treatment as Savioli’s Paigentia Building both on the residences and the store.
Detti also utilized some of the carving methods of Scarpa. The ground floor becomes gradually carved away from the other levels of the building much like Scarpa’s treatment of the Banco Populare in Verona.
Offices
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Adjacent to the residential facades, Detti constructed a building for service use. Employing the same style throughout the entirety of the project, Detti created a consistent language between the two buildings. Much like in the residential sector, viewers see long, linear movements coupled with the signature pushing and pulling technique.
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Detti's practice as an urban designer is similarly present in the services building. In addition to spaces for grocery shopping and office use, Detti included galleries and public squares. He used these as connecting points to link the entire building together. The building hence becomes a network of spaces, just like a city.
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The building is inviting to the public as it stands distinctly facing the main square. It is monolithic, meaning it is creating from a large, single block of concrete. The facade is not highly embellished, but rather has a few intentional scratches and holes for variety. Even with these details in the Roman plaster, the building's relatively plain exterior and uniformity still gives off a sense of public purpose.
Offices
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Adjacent to the residential facades, Detti constructed a building for service use. Employing the same style throughout the entirety of the project, Detti created a consistent language between the two buildings. Much like in the residential sector, viewers see long, linear movements coupled with the signature pushing and pulling technique.
​
Detti's practice as an urban designer is similarly present in the services building. In addition to spaces for grocery shopping and office use, Detti included galleries and public squares. He used these as connecting points to link the entire building together. The building hence becomes a network of spaces, just like a city.
​
The building is inviting to the public as it stands distinctly facing the main square. It is monolithic, meaning it is creating from a large, single block of concrete. The facade is not highly embellished, but rather has a few intentional scratches and holes for variety. Even with these details in the Roman plaster, the building's relatively plain exterior and uniformity still gives off a sense of public purpose.
Style
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As seen best in the bottom photo here on the right, some of the decorations on the walls have a slight green tint. Critiques of the building note that this green color is similar to that at San Miniato al Monte in Florence, Italy. This comparison shows Detti's wide range of influences across multiple cities. It is also clear that Detti thought carefully about the use of concrete and plaster, as the building actually reads as stone.
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Although there are surprising elements like the tilt in the roof and the spaces between walls, the service building is in its truest form, a practical structure. This logicality is seen through the clear horizontal and vertical lines that Detti uses to construct the entire facade.
Detti himself was a practical thinker, known to prioritize social and historical details over a fantasy of what a building could look like. This reasoned way of thinking is perhaps what distinguishes him so well from Scarpa, who was able to detach himself from reality in order to realize his designs.
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