A new chapter is being written in the transformation process of the Bicocca district. On 14 April the Bicocca Pavilion was inaugurated: the "Innovation Hub" of the newly-established Fondazione Bicocca, a non-profit organisation whose main purpose is to promote and support higher education, research and technology transfer, fostering collaboration among the University of Milan-Bicocca, the business community and institutions. 

Piuarch's project with Antonio Perazzi for the landscaping is part of the "Bicocca incontra Milano" (BiM) urban regeneration programme, promoted by Aermont Capital and Kervis SG. The programme, which envisaged the realisation of 43,300 square metres of workspaces, 3,400 square metres of commercial spaces and 6,000 square metres of green spaces and gardens, pursues the overall objective of returning to the city an innovative and sustainable work and research ecosystem that is also socially vibrant and inclusive, while respecting and enhancing the typological, material and figurative characteristics of the existing complex designed by Vittorio Gregotti in the mid-1980s on the site of the former Pirelli industrial area and now renovated through a careful retrofitting operation.

The subject of the intervention are the “Pirelli 10” building, which already houses companies, start-ups, cafés, restaurants, shops and exhibition spaces for art and design, the “Innovazione 3” building (currently being redeveloped, to be completed in 2026) and the square enclosed between them, the nerve centre of the project: an “urban forest” inviting people to enter, explore the public space, stop and interact, and in which the Bicocca Pavilion is “immersed”.

The pavilion is characterised by a free, almost circular layout that breaks with the rigidity of the orthogonal space in which it is located and is distributed over an area of approximately 800 square metres on three floors (one of which is underground). The ethereal glass volume, punctuated by inclined and staggered vertical perimeter elements recalling the organic arrangement of the bamboo trunks in the courtyard, contrasts with the monumental and rigorous fronts of the iconic complex, blurring into the landscape thanks to the green roof and to the interplay of transparent glass and semi-reflecting steel surfaces. 

In the words of Gino Garbellini, founding partner of Piuarch: "despite its small size compared to the monumental scale of the BiM complex, the Bicocca Pavilion assumes a key role in the redefinition of urban space. A small piece of architecture that precisely because of its lightness and organicity becomes the catalyst for a rebirth: a contemporary seed that, while blending into the landscape, emanates energy and activates new possibilities for relationships".