M9 is an urban regeneration district and a technological innovation hub for culture, artistic events, entertainment, and citizen services, inaugurated in December 2018. Inspired by international urban regeneration experiences, M9 offers an innovative format where multimedia culture, sustainable architecture, and citizen services come together to generate employment, growth, and well-being for the community.

The main attraction is the Museum of the 20th Century, which tells the story of Italy in the 20th century and serves as a highly multimedia and interactive present-day laboratory. Advanced technologies, immersive environments, and cutting-edge educational methods are used to facilitate learning about the past, understanding the present, and imagining the future.

The museum meets the challenge of narrating our 20th century, a period of lights and shadows, contradictions, and questions, in an engaging way. Through the grand and rapid transformations in daily life, sciences, technologies, and institutions, M9 stages an interdisciplinary narrative adventure for those who have not experienced that century directly.

At the urban level, M9 introduces a significant change in the distribution fabric of the city center. The design, by Sauerbruch Hutton, winner of the

international architectural design competition, creates new connections through pedestrian paths and crossings, designs new social squares, and establishes relationships between empty spaces, existing buildings, and new architectures.

The architectural and infrastructural complex’s aim is environmental respect and ecological sustainability. The museum has achieved LEED certification according to the 2009 New Construction protocol, obtaining the GOLD level with a total of 72 points.

The M9 Museum has an energy saving of about 35% compared to the reference standard. This result derives from a combination of different technological and design solutions including high-performance windows, low-consumption lighting systems, exploitation of the building’s thermal mass to contain energy consumption peaks (mass activation system), and the use of a high-efficiency energy envelope.

The project also includes a field of geothermal probes that allow the cooling of the environments in the summer and their heating in the winter, exploiting the thermal storage capacity of the building’s concrete structures. This technology covers the entire thermal demand (100% of the heating demand) of the museum in the winter and about 40% of the summer cooling demand.

Moreover, despite being an intervention located in a densely built urban center, the project has integrated a small solar field into the shed roofs, generating 56% of the museum’s annual primary energy demand. Thus, a single design element has combined a natural light source for exhibition spaces and a renewable energy source contributing to the sustainability of the intervention.

The LEED protocol also promotes indoor environmental quality, which has been improved by a 30% increase—compared to the regulatory standard—in the renewal air flow rates. The building’s plant systems are controlled by a BMS (Building Management System) that allows complete regulation, control, and scheduling of the museum’s different technological components. This tool makes it possible to monitor consumption and optimize efficiency during operation to achieve further energy savings.

The urban insertion of the interventions has also prioritized accessibility to new spaces through public transport and alternative means of transport and has adopted the use of green roofs (13%) and high-reflectance roof surfaces to mitigate the heat island effect.

Rating system (specify the protocol and version): PROJECT ID 1000022362 LEED-IT 2009

Client:  M9 DISTRICT SRL

Architectural Project: SAUERBRUCH HUTTON INTERNATIONAL

General Contractor: GRUPPO ICM S.p.A.

LEED Responsible for the Client: Luca Stefani – Thetis S.p.A.

Structural Design: SCE PROJECT SRL

Mechanical Systems Design: H.E.G. Hospital Engineering Group

Electrical Systems Design: Studio Tecnico Giorgio Destefani