Sunlight filtering through cement branches

There are spaces in Milan codified by time and the rules that denote them as places set apart, areas of the city that seem to live a life of their own, becoming part of the collective imagination even for those who do not live there or frequent them. Their particular – even unique – features have turned them into symbols that are not only part of our mental maps but also reproduced in the various virtual-reality supports we have at our fingertips.

One of these spaces is “Vittor Pisani”, so well known as not to require the qualifier “Street”. Built about a hundred years ago and extending from the median axis of the main railway station (Stazione Centrale), it is probably one of the widest avenues of Lombardy’s capital city. Somewhat outsize, with six traffic lanes flanked by 9-m tall porticoes and a streetscape of uninterrupted glazed curtain walling nearly 31-m high, it embodies the idea of the perfect modern city. For years, it was the backdrop of many high-profile advertisements and the set for numerous Italian movies, a perfect showpiece of a Milan that no longer exists, since, like everywhere in Italy, the city has evolved and transformed. And the project by tectoo, the Milan architecture firm headed since in 2015 by partners Susanna Scarabicchi and Andrea Peschiera, is another piece of the change taking place in this interesting scenario.

The newly constructed tertiary volume Vittor Pisani 22 (VP22) is a contemporary response aptly summing up how Milan has evolved as an increasingly environmentally aware city, enacting decisions in keeping with this commitment and whose innovative technological solutions are part of an interesting approach to the urban landscape. The complex stands on the plot once occupied by a 1960s office block. The challenge was to adhere to the spatial features of the old building located at the southern corner of a block at the intersection between Via Vittor Pisani...

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