Relational grafting
The project area is located at Viale Fulvio Testi 223 in Milan and represents an opportunity to recover and enhance a structure built in the 1950s, restoring its value after undergoing various transformations.
The complex, once used as a school-workshop for Pirelli employees, has been abandoned until now, and consists of two parts: a building originally intended for classrooms and later converted into offices, and a typical factory composed of a sequence of bays with approximately 8 meters spacing and varying lengths between 15 and 30 meters, with an average height of 7 meters. The distinctive feature is its brick structure with a shed roof with a metal framework.
In the 1990s, the building was adapted as an events and training space, and this intervention almost completely erased its original interior character. The new proposal revisits the potential of the original structural module, which is reclaimed, updated, and reconfigured in a new overall layout, aligning the building with the brick structure and demolishing a portion of the connecting building, thus emphasizing the courtyard facing Viale Fulvio Testi.
The appearance of the building is renewed both for necessary thermal insulation and due to the degradation of the existing panels. A new facade is applied, which respects the partition and the features of the existing building. Minimal planimetric changes enhance the existing structure while preserving the park with high-quality trees.
This results in a new harmony and proportion among the components of the construction, where the building’s body, characterized by a neat system of metallic panels, maintaining the same proportion as the existing concrete panels but painted in a matte brick-red color stands in contrast with the more horizontal body of the brick building, which is entirely preserved except for modifications to the windows and roof for energy efficiency reasons.
