The project to redesign Stazione Centrale in Milan was presented and discussed during an evening conference held on Monday 5 May by the Fondazione dell’Ordine degli Architetti in Milan, introduced by Daniela Volpi and chaired by Valerio Mosco, with contributions from Rossana Bossaglia, Marco Tamino, Aldo De Poli and Carla di Francesco.

Rossana Bossaglia, invited to speak on the history of the building, immediately identified a double sided problem. A basic practical problem regarding the use of the station. Bossaglia raised the question of why on these occasions nobody remembers the fundamental role of these buildings which is that of a place to depart from and to arrive at. Considering that it is perhaps the most convenient station in Europe to get to by taxi, why move it?

A second aspect which she declared herself to be against was the tendency to transform these places into a commercial prospect, in the name of improving usability, citing as a negative example the proposal put forward to transfer the Brera Gipsoteca to inside the station. Rossana Bossaglia gave an account of how the future of Stazione Centrale had been discussed in the past: in the fifties there were even thoughts of demolishing the ugly building, when opinion was that in the reconstruction of the city after the war the language of Milanese rationalism should be used, as opposed to a contrary line of thought based on a vision of a historical and sentimental nature.

She pointed out that the station has nothing to do with the Liberty style, that Ulisse Stacchini had designed on German or Austrian models (Otto Wagner) according to the so called taste for “eclectic revivalism”, and how the controversies regarding the station were taken up again in the seventies with proposals to lighten the building. At that time the fixed furnishings from the main reception areas were removed, today conserved in Genoa and Miami.

Marco Tamino, architect for Grandi Stazioni, spoke outlining the characteristics of this particular organisation. Grandi Stazioni is a company which makes up part of the FFSS group formed in 2002 following the redesign of the Roma Termini station. It is 60% public whilst the remaining 40% is in the hands of the private sector and is for the next forty years responsible for managing the transformation and functionality of the national railway stations with a programme which includes another twelve stations besides that of Milan.

Tamino described how the approach to redesign had been criticised because it rejected the notion of competitions, explaining that it was an issue that required skills too specific to the field, pointing out however that Grandi Stazioni commissioned specific consultancies to architectural practices (Vignelli for signage, Castiglioni for lighting) and large engineering firms, involving the collaboration of around two hundred professionals. He also gave a summary of the in depth consultations which took place prior to the final evaluation of the CIPE, with examinations and observations from the Soprintendenza, advisory commissions, the Comune di Milano and commercial associations. The architect then described his point of view regarding the future and new role of stations.

Faced with unstoppable processes of mobility, territory is no longer that controllable portion that architects have up until now thought to design. In this new geography of nodes of interchange, where a number of urban functions are brought together, the solemn and celebrative aspect of stations is changing. The station areas are more frequented and more accessible places. They are places in which all urban services are overlaid. The station becomes the window onto the city, a place in which the city presents itself (at Roma Termini a museum of contemporary art has been created). These areas can therefore become urban piazzas, perhaps the piazzas of the next millennium. Tamino then moved on to illustrate the scheme though his drawings.

The intervention sees the retrieval of the spatial quality that Stacchini intended for the station in the thirties, freeing up the gallery of the taxi rank, the central area with the ticket offices and the gallery at the head of the platforms from all the additional shop units put up over the last years. Intervening above all with a new design regarding accessibility, the new functions compatible with travel are brought together in large service areas underneath the level of the platforms, previously unused, creating a pedestrian tunnel connecting the two sides of the station at urban level.

The atrium of the ticket office will be cleaned up and treated as an urban piazza, for concerts, exhibitions, meetings, temporary use. The main flow of travellers will be directed away form this space and replanned with moving walkways. The concept regarding the ticket offices will change: becoming 3000 square metres of air conditioned space with desks and automatic ticket machines, resembling more a travel agency, eliminating the barrier between traveller and staff. The first phase of intervention, that described in the project, will deal with the part of the building used for travel, whilst the successive phase will deal with the enormous storage areas under the platforms to give them over to functions more linked to the city. The restoration of the monumental aspect and of the Palazzina Reale, which includes the renewal of the vaults (underneath are held up by a metal structure) using strips of carbon fibre, has already begun in accord with the Soprintendenza.

The project was placed under systematic criticism by Aldo De Poli, an academic specialised in stations and author of a recent book on the subject. De Poli outlined how the notion the station in European cities is dealt with in a different way to Milan, in a twofold phenomenon of nodes of interchange outside the city, numerous in France and Holland, or symbolic places rooted in the historic city, such as in Paris or Madrid.

In Milan, a station that covers a large area, the project put forward deals with only 20% of this area (the few historic areas) and forgets to work on the urban spaces surrounding the station. An articulated report entitled “ten critical points in the final scheme”, supported with an analysis of the project and renderings which attempt to reconstruct the future spaces, was explained beginning with three principal critical points: the issues regarding a listed building, the inconvenience of use, the unprecendented procedure adopted (the Legge Obiettivo).

Carla di Francesco, Soprintendente Regionale ai Beni Architettonici e Ambientali, described the phases of work being carried out by the architects in parallel with the demands of the Soprintendenza with respect to a historical building. The evening was the last chance to find out about and debate a project which has already been approved and which is now the subject of discussion of various associations and local political organisations.