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Throughout the history of architecture, the use of the tetrahedron as a generative architectural form can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Richard Buckminster Fuller based his octet-truss construction on a combination of octahedrons and tetrahedrons. This three-dimensional lattice system was patented in 1961 and used for geodesic domes like his 1960 Climatron greenhouse in St. Louis, and the US Pavilion at Expo ’67 in Montreal. More recently – in 2016 – the tetrahedron was employed by BIG for a 35-story residential building in New York on the banks of the Hudson River. So unusual is its shape that it is now generally known as the Tetrahedron Building. Few other examples exist.
The tetrahedron has now once again been employed by Ruggero Baldasso (born 1972, trained in Venice, a former co-worker of Álvaro Siza, with extensive experience in design and teaching in China and the US) as the generative form of the Novaplan residential complex project in Jesolo, a well-known seaside resort on Italy’s northern Adriatic coast. The first completed maisonette was Gold Nature CasaClima-certified.
Leaving aside the inevitable debate on the advisability of the local authorities’ urban planning choices – starting with the master plan drawn up by Kenzo Tange in 1997 – the last two decades have seen Jesolo welcome several projects by internationally renowned architects that have undoubtedly contributed to enhancing the seaside town’s attractiveness. Works include Richard Meier’s Jesolo Lido Village, Carlos Ferrater’s Torre Aquileia, completed in 2009, the Merville complex by Gonçalo Byrne and João Ferreira Nunes in 2011 (THE PLAN 053), “Le bâtiment descendant l’escalier” by ELASTICOFarm in 2021 (THE PLAN 133), and the JMUSE by Studio Architetti Mar in 2022. In fact, although in different ways and on a completely different scale, the Jesolo...
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