The project is the redevelopment (LEED Gold) of a 6,500m2 office building in Milan, located in the Bicocca district.
Instead to demolish the pre-existing 4-storey building, we preferred to propose the general renovation of both the interior and exterior while maintaining the existing structure.
The goal was to maintain the industrial memory of the building. The pre-existing structure, of extraordinary precision and beauty, was preserved and became the main starting element. The focus of the project was therefore to add as little as possible and work on internal flows and functions. Each internal added element is always independent from the existing structure.
The building, approximately 100 meters long, housed the former offices of the historic Breda Siderurgica, a well-known Milanese metallurgy factory; due to its length it is now receiving the nickname “horizontal skyscraper”.
The Bicocca neighborhood is a well-known neighborhood in the northern area of Milan. It is one of the first Italian industrial districts, a symbol of a time populated by working classes, where large industries such as Pirelli, Marcegaglia, Breda itself, Magneti Marelli, etc. arose.
Since 1991, Bicocca has also become one of the most crucial pillars of the university structure of Milan with the Bicocca University of Milan.
The pre-existing building was supported by a slender iron structure which was covered by false-walls and false-ceilings.
At no point could its characteristics be appreciated.
It was brought to light by the large spaces created and by the removal of all the internal walls and coverings.
Whoever, in the 1950s, had sized the trusses in both directions, had optimized the material used in the best possible way and built the structural framework in a spatially interesting way.
The approach to the project was therefore immediately to highlight this constructive tension and to safeguard it as much as possible.
In the basement, which became the entrance floor, it was decided to highlight the structural aspect of the concrete, leaving it exposed, even in places where it is imprecise, imperfect, even where it is in contact with demolitions.
All this to represent the urban aspect of the unfinished, a founding concept in our completed projects.
The internal courtyard has also been redeveloped, with new green areas, a landscape project and a new pedestrian and cycle path.
From a functional and distribution point of view, the choice was to transform floor -1 into floor 0, or to convert what were the basement rooms (warehouses, cellars) into double-height hall/reception and work spaces usable, generating 1,600 m2 of habitable spaces, authorized by relevant municipal concessions.
You enter the building from the middle of the hall, go down into the double-height entrance space where there is the reception area, a 5m birch tree, the two elevators in mirrored material and the waiting and meeting room.
Another central aspect of the project is given by the facade composition.
There was a design interest in weakening the monumentality of the two concrete stairwells, in rationalizing the division with the outside through a uniform skin, in dialogue with the context.
It is the first building ever built (as far as our research and information is concerned) to have a curtain wall with a transparent rubber external finish. In fact, the facade is made up of pressers and uprights in transparent recyclable silicone rubber.
The idea of experimenting with the choice of transparent rubber on the facade derives from the intentional desire to dialogue with day and night light, and also from the location, home to the first Pirelli factory.
Regarding the internal spaces, by leaving the internal structure exposed, each floor reacts with space, light, and context.
The upper floors are differentiated by a faint color tone: Floor Zero (Green), Floor First (Yellow), Floor Second (Coral).
The project is shaped with spatiality and matter; in general our projects are set up using the original colors of the materials: gray for concrete, wood color for wood, black for steel etc. Right at the end of the process, not before, if necessary, an artificial layer of color is added.
Sometimes we need it, sometimes we don’t.
In this particular case the colors are an artificial expedient to abstract the existing structure and highlight the contemporaneity of the architectural choice.
At night the building reaches its maximum expression, showing its internal organs and its ribs.
