Ermenegildo Zegna Headquarters

By Francesco Pagliari - 7 January 2010

Outside Porta Genova, this former industrial site in Milan is a now prime development area. Served by a metropolitan underground line, the area is being revolutionised, the buildings of its industrial past replaced by architecture in line with its new identity as a creativity, design and fashion hub. The new headquarters of luxury fashion brand Ermenegildo Zegna is part of this urban and architectural transformation.
Designed by Antonio Citterio and Partners in collaboration with architecture practice Beretta e Associati, the building’s quiet, restrained architecture dialogues with the surrounding urban fabric, responds to the functional and technology requirements of the activities carried on inside and embodies the elegance and creativity of the famous griffe. The constraints posed by the site prompted a consequential series of architectural solutions.
Hemmed in by other buildings, an imposing entrance was not feasible. The muted discretion of the solution is, however, well suited to a building that only gradually reveals what lies within: a whole world where fashion is created and put on show. The double height frontage onto the road is in fact a series of adjacent buildings under a single roof. On one side, the entrance proper presents as a glazed façade with steel uprights, broad canopy and flat roof. On the other, the outer glazing encloses a garden, beyond which one glimpses the glazed curtain wall of the complex behind. An emblematic sculpture by Michelangelo Pistoletto “Wollen - La Mela Rigenerata” graces the area.
The complex’s factory typology and characteristic saw tooth roof are, technologically and architecturally, a more sophisticated version of the former turbine factory that once stood on the site. The visible mullion and transom frame, again synonymous with industrial architecture, has the advantage of greater functionality and speed of construction.
The orderly array of...