The new buildings at Porta Volta in Milan , designed by Herzog & De Meuron, fit into the sixteenth-century urban layout and draw inspiration from the historical, Milanese architectures, thus upgrading a whole area where townspeople can now live.
After the Fondazione Feltrinelli opened last December, the opening of the new Microsoft headquarters is attended soon. Artemide e Unifor are suppliers of both the buildings.
We have seen them rising day by day, their massive, inclined concrete girders taking up a disused area, and now that they have been completed, they are already part of the townscape. These “pyramids”, standing out for their repetitive rhythm of filled and empty surfaces, follow the layout of the age-old Mura Spagnole (Spanish Walls) dating back to the sixteenth century.
The architecture, designed by the Pritzker awarded studio Herzog & De Meuron, includes the Fondazione Feltrinelli research center, office buildings and coffee shop, restaurant, shops.
The project lends an upgraded, usable and liveable area to the city and provides also for the carrying out of a green lung with cycle paths and the extension of the existing avenues through a new boulevard.
Following the teaching of the Master Aldo Rossi, Jacques Hergoz e Pierre De Meuron, refuses the concept of “International style of architecture” and finds an identity in the Lombard farmhouses and the long and narrow architectures of the historical, Milanese institutions.
The outside massive look seems to break up inside, where all rooms are amazingly light, minimal, bright, with panoramic vistas of the city.
Instead, the inclined front-roof produces an astonishing, “neo-gothic” atmosphere in some of the environments of the 5th floor, like the amazing library of Fondazione Feltrinelli.
The new Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli headquarters occupy about 2.700 sqm on five floors.
At the ground floor there is a Feltrinelli bookstore with caffè-bistrot; the 1st floor hosts a multifunctional space for events and shows; 2nd and 3rd floors are devoted to workplaces each of them equipped with kitchenette and meeting and seminar rooms. The impressive library at 5th floor includes a reading room also equipped with multimedia reading stations.
Artemide, Unifor, Republic of Fritz Hansen, Vitra: high level suppliers.
Unifor is the supplier for office furnishings, kitchenettes and innovative, very light and invisible glass partitions.
The chairs are supplied by Vitra and Republic of Fritz Hansen.
Artemide is the lighting supplier; for each of the five floors of the building it designed specific lighting solutions capable to interact with the architecture and to satisfy the whole range of uses of the premises: flexible, dynamic appliances that define the spaces at the different times of the day, ensuring high technical performance and creating pleasant luminous ambiances.
A regular shower of more than 100 Unterlinden (lamps designed by Herzog & De Meuron in 2014) appliances softly animates the amazing space of the Library space at 5th floor. A special version of Unterlinden table was expressly designed for the reading stations, too.
Photo below by Filippo Romano.