With a gym, pool, restaurant, hotel, parking lot, 3,000 square meters of co-working spaces, a rooftop bar, garden and city archives, Florence’s The Social Hub Belfiore opening on February 1 is aiming to be a community pillar in the San Jacopino area, a short distance from Santa Maria Novella train station. It’s the second hotel in Florence from The Social Hub Corporation, after the one in viale Spartaco Lavagnini, formerly known as The Student Hotel.
Rising over nine floors, four of which are underground, the convenient location near the future Firenze Belfiore high speed rail station makes it a hub for travellers as well as locals. The first floor is dedicated to shops, bars, restaurants and common areas, all decorated in a bright modern style with lots of green flourishes, while the 7,000 square meter rooftop, larger than piazza della Repubblica, will be decorated by botanist Antonio Perazzi with 60 different species of vegetation, creating a hanging garden. A monumental staircase, featuring an arch with the words “Come as you are”, takes visitors straight to the roof from the outside of the building. In between there are 550 hotel rooms and 3,000 square meters of co-working spaces, the largest of its kind in Tuscany, open to all on a subscription basis. The basements are dedicated to parking spaces and city council archives.
The edifice aims to attract locals, and to this end it has designed a new subscription model. For 99 euro a month you can access the co-working space, the rooftop pool, the 24-hour gym and other areas normally accessible to hotel guests. The Social Hub is also planning to organize over 600 yearly events, focused on culture and entertainment.
The forward-thinking structure (like it or not…) by Natalini Architects took over five years to complete. It stands on the former site of the Fiat offices, the abandonment of which had left behind a lake in the middle of the city. The first step was the reclamation of the land, a challenging undertaking that required the extraction of thousands of cubic meters of water. Only after the completion of this task was it possible to lay the foundations, create the underground spaces, restructure the surrounding roads while creating a new cycle lane and construct the rest of the complex.
