A city fragment

An office building in Milan by giussaniarch, inserted into the urban fabric with formal clarity and the capacity to engage with the context – and so become a reference point for an area of the city outskirts that lacks an identity.

giussaniarch, Edificio per uffici, Milano

As you approach the large building that giussaniarch (Roberto Giussani and Andrea Balestrero) have created in Via Siusu in north-east Milan, not far from the district of Lambrate, you glimpse a mysterious fragment, outwardly neutral, evanescent and silent in its opaline skin.

The building houses offices and a data centre but this is, at first sight, of secondary importance. What is immediately striking is its expressive force, the result of the conviction with which it has been inserted into an area of the city that with disconcerting coherence sums up all the traits typical of the outskirts of Milan: hurried construction, a lack of attention to detail, and the absence of architecture and public space, which is present merely as a consequence of the road layout and the bureaucratic division of the land parcels.

In similar scenarios, it is the architecture that reacts, establishing a dialectic with the urban setting that welcomes it. The response in this case has a strong sense of completeness, both from a volumetric and a city planning perspective; it is precisely the formal clarity that emphasises a series of relationships within the building and with the section of the city around it.

From the point of view of the volumetric structure, the open space along the axis of Via Deruta has a twofold role: it not only faces Parco Lambro, the city’s largest green space, but, in more immediate terms, also creates what is effectively an urban foyer. This is a sort of “crisis” in the facade that also underlines the criticism of the idea of the isolated building; it puts into practice the clear, powerful intention of introjecting the urban dimension in the same way as a large, open-air anteroom.

In addition, the determining vector is the continuity of the Parco Lambro/internal courtyard system, which finds room for a rooftop garden. This also performs the delicate function of establishing relationships between the sequence of open spaces and the necessary technical volumes, making these an excellent means of supporting the small secret garden, which can be reached from a metal walkway.

The inside courtyard is therefore a calm, invaluable space. It fits with the Milanese tradition that sees the richness of the courtyards hidden within buildings – a contrast with the lack of piazzas and large spaces for relaxation – and demonstrates how the appearance of a structure is necessarily correlated with the value, character and meaning of the designed space.

It is precisely the interior space within the block that is emphasised as originating the idealised limit of the line of tension into which is fixed a gigantic “linchpin cavity” constituted by a large distribution space. It is here that the deep body of the building thins in favour of a large external vertical hollow, doubling the space internally in a referential game.

The full-height distribution space therefore takes on a completely urban scale, assuming the status of a macrosystem. Here the language and the adjectivisation of the interiors are intensely interpreted.

The external fence, made up of a dense succession of slender white tubes, acts as an idealised, abstract base for the building. It transforms and folds itself into generous seats set into the paving of the interior courtyard with octagonal geometric motifs. It is only once you have crossed the threshold – a non-material one, as the exterior paving continues inside – that you discover a world of ramps, wide walkways, a series of floors open to the interior space, exchanges of views, and dialogues at a distance, where the banality of the vertical route of a typical office block gives way to a structured reflection on the collective meaning of a place of work.

giussaniarch, Office building, Milangiussaniarch, Edificio per uffici, Milano — giussaniarch, Office building, Milan

The structure’s opaque, silent shell does not disrupt the rhythm between space and non-space of the facade, as understood in a classical sense; the building skin conceals the physical features of the building. The rhetoric of the “total transparency” of the glass surface is finally set aside and the facade becomes a place of mediation between the interior space (restricted as little as possible, allowing for maximum flexibility of use) and the urban dimension: a membrane capable of exchanging light with the outside, depending on the temperature needs within the building.

This is not simply a Verkleidung, what Gottfried Semper called the “disguise” of a building, designed to mask its features. The compact surface, made from screen-printed glass blades, has the role of delimiting its surface and making the volume clear and final; it is always changing since the rotation of the individual modules – depending on the time of day – delicately modifies some of the sections, making the whole dynamic and alive. It is in this sense interesting to note very briefly how this shell, which is indifferent to the spatial values of the building’s interior, allows a shift of attention from the problem of the representativeness of the productive-tertiary building to that of the strength of the space in itself.

For this reason too, the design reminds us how much architecture is obliged to take note of the city, and how much it must offer itself as a positive fact – not as a simple exercise of form, and not as an inattentive, solipsistic outcome of ideas unconnected to the city.

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giussaniarch, Office building, Milan

giussaniarch, Office building, Milano

giussaniarch, Office building, Milan, model

/Users/andreabalestrero/Documents/giussaniarch/LAVORI/2009-14_SETECI/for andrea drawings/drawings for magazine/MAPPA.dwg

giussaniarch, Office building, Milan, site plan

/Users/andreabalestrero/Documents/giussaniarch/LAVORI/2009-14_SETECI/for andrea drawings/drawings for magazine/plans and section_2.dwg

giussaniarch, Office building, Milan, plan

giussaniarch_SETECI Via siusi7_pianta hall esecutivo

giussaniarch, Office building, Milan, plan detail

ottimizzazione.pdf

giussaniarch, Office building, Milan, axonometry

giussaniarch, Office building, Milan, facade detail

Office building, Milan, Italy
Program: office building
Architect: giussaniarch
Project: giussaniarch - Roberto Giussani, Andrea Balestrero
Collaborators: Eugenio Feresin, Michele Nebuloni, Costanza Ronc
Client: Mediobanca Innovation Services
Lighting project: Rossi Bianchi Lighting Design
Landscape: Stefano Baccari
Structures: Simete (Ing. Stefano Dalmasso)
Plants: Prodim (Ing. Matteo Bo)
Fire safety: Studio Progess SRL (Ing. Giuseppe Amaro)
Safety: M+ Associati
Contractor: Itinera Spa
Facades: Stahlbau Pichler Srl
Area: 4,960 sqm
Completion: 2014

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A city fragment

An office building in Milan by giussaniarch, inserted into the urban fabric with formal clarity and the capacity to engage with the context – and so become a reference point for an area of the city outskirts that lacks an identity.

Tomorrow's energy comes from today's ideas

/Users/andreabalestrero/Documents/giussaniarch/LAVORI/2009-14_SETECI/for andrea drawings/drawings for magazine/MAPPA.dwg

/Users/andreabalestrero/Documents/giussaniarch/LAVORI/2009-14_SETECI/for andrea drawings/drawings for magazine/plans and section_2.dwg

giussaniarch_SETECI Via siusi7_pianta hall esecutivo

ottimizzazione.pdf

This system turns the outdoors into a custom experience

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