Milan City Guide: 20 Projects to See in Italy’s Fashion Capital
Milan City Guide: 20 Projects to See in Italy’s Fashion Capital
A global city and cosmopolitan hub, Milan is mainly recognised today as a fashion and economic center, widely coveted by visitors from around the world. It is the second most populated city in Italy and hosts some of the major fashion and design related events in the world. Milan also houses prestigious educational institutions, many of which are renowned for heritage and conservationist specialties.
The latter is quite relevant, seeing as the city’s most recognisable tourist attractions are the gothic Duomo di Milano, Santa Maria delle Grazia or the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, amongst other classical and baroque sites. It’s in fact this marriage of the beautifully crafted and often ornamental heritage with the modern and contemporary monuments that makes its unique style.
If you plan visiting Milan and its bustling Salone del Mobile this year, we’ve gathered a few recent works that reflect its artistic and historically sensitive architecture type.
1. Bun Milan Restaurant / Masquespacio
The aim for the project was to create an identity with a clear focus on the younger generations and at the same time represent a more sophisticated approach for a high-quality hamburger restaurant.
2. Marsotto Milan Showroom / nendo
A showroom in Milan’s Brera district for the marble manufacturer Marsotto. Replete with ground and basement levels, it exhibits marble furniture, sundries, and samples of processed materials.
3. MEET Digital Arts Center / Carlo Ratti Associati
With the MEET project, CRA aims to investigate the meaning of physical space in an increasingly digitized world. It argues that architecture should foster unexpected encounters between people, precisely those that are missing in the digital realm.
4. Collegio di Milano / Piuarch
Winner of the competition held by the Collegio Foundation of the Milanese Universities, the project is distinguished by its close dialogue with the existing building designed in the 1970s by Marco Zanuso, respecting its elevations, chromatic scheme, and branched form.
5. New Urban Campus for Bocconi University / SANAA
The new Urban Campus for the Bocconi University is located on a large site close to the city center of Milan, adjacent to the existing university.
6. Residential Building Canonica / deamicisarchitetti
What is interesting about this approach, even in the specific case of Canonica’s street, is the attempt to make tangible the sense of time within the project.
7. Bally Flagship Store Milan / Casper Mueller Kneer Architects
Bally’s first Italian Flagship store, designed by Casper Mueller Kneer is situated on Via Montenapoleonein Milan at the heart of the city’s prestigious golden quadrilateral.
8. Camparino in Galleria Bar / Lissoni Casal Ribeiro
The restyling of Camparino in Galleria was carried with full regard for the history of the location in terms of its aesthetic and social significance. For Lissoni Casal Ribeiro, the renovation of an institution such as the Camparino has meant reviving certain tenets of Milanese interior design while seeking to maintain intact the concept of conviviality and sociality.
9. Residenze Carlo Erba / Eisenman Architects + Degli Esposti Architetti + AZstudio
For a triangular site bounded by nondescript buildings, this project attempts to create a symbolic contemporary apartment building with the number of units required for commercial viability while responding to the context, particularly to the adjacent public garden, by continuing the garden onto the site.
10. Apple Piazza Liberty / Foster + Partners
A celebration of the joys of city life and embodying its dynamic nature, the signature water feature is an interactive, multisensory experience. Visitors enter the fountain through a glass-covered entrance enveloped by the sights and sounds of vertical jets of water that splash against the 26-foot high glass walls.
11. Generali Tower / Zaha Hadid Architects
Located above the new Tre Torri station on Line 5 of the city’s metro system, CityLife opens the 90-acre site to year-round public use for the first time; providing new civic spaces, public parks and residential areas, in addition to shopping districts and corporate offices.
12. forte_forte milano / forte_forte
A spatial and emotional extension of the tactile, atmospheric and dreamy values that define the unique spirit of the brand. An environment with a delicate yet affirmative character, feminine in its levity full of strength, which combines memory and present, travel and introspection in a story made of materials and elements assembled following the thread of intuition.
13. Motta Milano 1928 / Collidanielarchitetto
Concept owned by Autogrill and located inside the “Il Mercato del Duomo” flagship store, Motta offers a new concept of hospitality, where the transverse nature of different eras and suggestions generate a fluid environment, punctuated by the use of different materials connected by common geometric matrices.
14. M89 Hotel / Piuarch
Opposite the building, there is the rhythmic series of brick blocks of the Caproni factory, with their shed roof and industrial archaeology charm: the M89 Hotel – the new four-star destination at number 89 of via Mecenate– faces the factory halls that one hundred years ago hosted one of the leading aviation companies and which are now home to Gucci, after a meticulous renovation and expansion project by Piuarch.
15. Gucci Hub / Piuarch
The old Caproni factory, built in 1915 in the eastern suburbs of Milan, has been brought back to life thanks to a renovation and redevelopment project transforming this old plant into the new Milan offices of the famous fashion brand Gucci.
16. Feltrinelli Porta Volta / Herzog & de Meuron
Together with the building of Fondazione, the project includes the development of two further buildings, mainly dedicated to offices, and a generous green area as extensions of the existing boulevards.
17. Fondazione Prada / OMA
The new Fondazione Prada is projected in a former industrial complex too, but one with an unusual diversity of spatial environments. To this repertoire, we are adding three new buildings — a large exhibition pavilion, a tower, and a cinema — so that the new Fondazione Prada represents a genuine collection of architectural spaces in addition to its holdings in art.
18. Cascina Merlata Residential Development / Mario Cucinella Architects
The project of Mario Cucinella Architects includes the construction of three of the seven residential towers inside the Expo Village, designed by Euromilano, within the redevelop of the Masterplan Cascina Merlata in Milan.
19. Base – Center For Culture And Creativity / Onsite Studio
The project inside the former Ansaldo complex comes to terms with a large “open” building, not blocked in a single form, but designed to serve the flexibility of the various programs and activities it contains, hosting multiple scenarios.
20. Bosco Verticale / Boeri Studio
The Vertical Forest is an architectural concept which replaces traditional materials on urban surfaces using the changing polychromy of leaves for its walls. The biological architect relies on a screen of vegetation, needing to create a suitable microclimate and filter sunlight, and rejecting the narrow technological and mechanical approach to environmental sustainability.
Note: The quoted texts are excerpts from the archived descriptions of each project, previously sent by the architects. Find more reference projects in this My ArchDaily folder created by the authors.
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