Park and Nervi’s unknown masterpiece in Milan: “As architects, we have a duty to act as cultural mediators”

Milan, Via Fabio Filzi. It’s the 1950s, and Eugenio Soncini has just left the Ponti-Fornaroli-Soncini studio to begin his own professional practice in collaboration with his brother Ermenegildo. At that time in Milan, Gio Ponti had already designed the Torre Rasini, next to the Bastioni di Porta Venezia, as well as the Politecnico’s Faculty of Architecture, and was working on the construction of the Pirelli Tower—the engineering feat that also involved the genius of Pier Luigi Nervi. On that very same street, in those same years, another building was rising—one that would later receive far less recognition than the celebrated “Pirellone.” This is Palazzo Galbani. Designed by the Soncini brothers, its structural system was also entrusted to Nervi.

The two buildings face each other: the first at number 22, the second at 25. The differences are substantial—one a symbol of innovation, considered by many to be Milan’s first true skyscraper; the other more discreet and significantly lower (just twelve floors). Yet both speak of a Milan undergoing radical transformation, driven by the economic boom and postwar reconstruction, as well as the 1953 master plan that first identified the area of the new “business district”: Porta Nuova.

While Ponti’s building has been preserved exactly as the great master of twentieth-century Italian architecture conceived it with Nervi—even after a small plane crash in 2002—the one commissioned by the Galbani company from the Soncini brothers has been less fortunate. In the early 2000s, it underwent “renovations” that only made it more obsolete, distorting its identity and altering its qualities to the point of erasing entire parts of its history. Today, Park—whose design philosophy centers on the adaptive reuse of Milan’s modernist heritage—has taken over this hidden gem on behalf of Domo Media. By stripping away unnecessary layers, the studio has reinterpreted the 1950s project through a contemporary lens—or rather, brought to light what was already inherently contemporary in the original design. “Our way of working is to understand how much of the original can still be relevant today,” Park tells Domus, as we stand on the seventh floor of Palazzo Galbani, looking out from within the building.

As soon as you enter the building, all it takes is a glance upward for the most radical element of the entire structure to reveal itself: a pristine white undulating ceiling slab that defines the space.

For decades it remained almost invisible due to successive renovation works. “We found it completely filled with pipes, suspended ceiling fragments, and lighting systems,” says Filippo Pagliani, co-founder of Park alongside Michele Rossi. “We wanted to remove everything, to free it and expose the structure as much as possible.”

This is a structural slab capable of spanning up to 14 meters, repeated across all twelve floors. Nervi’s goal was to reduce floor-to-floor height while minimizing the slab’s thickness, yet still allowing it to bear loads without intermediate columns—making the building extremely flexible.

The result is a slab so thin that its undulating form, beyond its refined aesthetic quality, is essential to its structural performance. “Now that everything has been cleaned up, you can clearly see the drop in the perimeter beam for structural reasons, which seems to extend the perspective view of this sequence of waves,” Park notes.

Revealed once again in its visual continuity, the slab returns as the building’s most powerful defining feature.

Although the façade is currently hidden from the street by scaffolding, the studio’s intervention on the elevations is already perceptible from within—an outcome of extensive and meticulous research. “We’ve worked with the Soncini brothers’ designs before,” Rossi comments, referring to the Serenissima retrofit. He adds, “Until a few years ago, there was no accessible archive of their studio, which made the research more complicated.”

Moreover, unlike the Serenissima—which “had reached us aged, but intact”—Palazzo Galbani had been heavily altered by continuous renovations, carried out almost every decade since the 1980s, significantly affecting the quality of the original design. In adaptive reuse projects—currently widespread across Europe, as seen in works selected for the EU Mies Awards—the aim is not so much to turn back time, but to reconstruct a lost logic. This is precisely the case with Palazzo Galbani’s façade, whose fully perimeter-based ventilation system was originally designed to free the undulating ceiling and display it unobstructed. It was a system that turned the façade into a true climatic device, integrating structure, systems, and environmental comfort into a single coherent design.

The early 2000s marked its compromise, with the replacement of the envelope and the adoption of standardized mechanical systems. As a result, the ceiling was “contaminated,” creating a deeper rupture than one might expect—not only technological, but cultural. This is why Park has once again delegated building services to the façade, despite what the studio describes as “inevitable” compromises. “Given the requirements of contemporary office use, which the building is now intended for, we couldn’t fully return to the original logic,” Pagliani and Rossi explain. Still, the goal was to “preserve the geometric lines and the key features” of the Soncini and Nervi design.

The result is a façade that does not replicate, but interprets. The horizontal bands between floors have been restored to their original proportions after having been thickened in previous interventions. It is an envelope that breathes again—because in reinstating a system, it also reactivates a principle: that of an architecture capable of integrating form and function.

Despite the thoroughness of the research, it is rare for every element of a modern building to be preserved in redevelopment projects. “It’s a sore point,” admits Pagliani. The top two floors once housed the executive offices, designed by Roberto Menghi, introducing a different architectural language from the rest of the building. These spaces contained architectural features that are now difficult to reconstruct.
“A large circular opening once connected the levels, but it was later sealed off,” as were the terraces and interiors lined with wood paneling, along with a presumed artistic contribution by Bobo Piccoli for the flooring. All of it is now gone.

There are also elements that Park deliberately chose not to restore. In Soncini’s original design, the windows were of the “pantograph” type: when opened, the sash would project outward and remain suspended, without taking up interior space.

Over time, these openings disappeared because they “no longer meet contemporary needs.” And it is perhaps here that the project reveals its most critical dimension. Some parts of the building have been irreversibly lost, erased by previous interventions that compromised their lifespan. But not everything must necessarily be saved.

It is within this space of uncertainty that the role of today’s designer takes shape. “We strongly believe that the work of an architect in Europe, and especially in Italy, is to engage with the built environment and pre-existing structures,” Rossi explains, “as if we were cultural mediators” between past and future—between what “deserves” to be preserved or restored and what may instead remain in the archives.

It is a difficult position for architects, especially considering that twentieth-century buildings are often at risk due to a lack of effective protection. Unlike “historic” buildings, there are no clear guidelines, no binding constraints. Intervening in the existing fabric therefore inevitably means selecting, preserving, and excluding. 
And it is precisely in the gap between fidelity and interpretation that the quality of the intervention is measured.