Offices & New facilities
Augusta, Italy, 2009

principals: Andrea Di Stefano, Aleksandra Jaeschke
design team: Francesco Giunta, Paolo Tringali
renderings: Massimo D’Aiello
engineering: Nicola Impollonia

Caterpillar XL is an inhabitable version of the Caterpillar footpath. It continues to explore the notion of moire effect in the structural façade of an office building formed by a series of interweaving programmatic and circulatory strips. The building inserts itself into a larger system characterised by varying functions and speeds and forming a new masterplan of an existing transport company. The traditional concrete frame is replaced by a T-shaped concrete column supporting floor slabs suspended from the roof with iron rods. The structural rods are organised in double rows and inclined at varying angles which satisfy structural requirements and simultaneously respond to secondary functions such as shading, visibility and accessibility. Moire effects; apparent patterns emerge from this superposition of undulating layers of thin structural elements embedding movement into the headquarters office of a transport company.