Ermenegildo Zegna HQ
ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA HQ
Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel + Beretta Associati
ARCHITECTS
Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel, Beretta Associati
GENERAL CONTRACTOR
Colombo costruzioni
MANUFACTURERS
AGC, Cotto d'Este
STRUCTURES
Redesco
LIGHTING DESIGN
Metis lighting
CATEGORY
Office Buildings, Adaptive Reuse
LOCATION
Milan, Italy
YEAR
2008
Text description provided by architect.
The former Riva Calzoni re-conversion, in Milan, has produced a business district, almost entirely dedicated to the fashion field, through a new interpretation of industrial areas of a peculiar worth.
This project, studied out for Ermenegildo Zegna, substitutes an existing shed, impossible to be preserved because of the complexity of its structures, with a completely different space which, with its two buried levels of parking lots, takes up the previous disposition of volumes.
The brand new building, even if reproducing the profile of a shed roofing, gives a fresh interpretation of spaces organisation.
Totally set in a courtyard system, the structure overlooks the street only by a long glass tunnel which opens itself on via Stendhal through a narrowed foyer.
The long tunnel, on four levels, holds flights and footbridges connecting the showrooms’ area to the offices’ building.
As a matter of fact, Zegna’s headquarters in Milan have a showroom for each of its collections, the commercial offices, the public relations and a presentation area on the ground floor, conceived as a real theatre.
All the functional spaces develop around an inside court-terrace which corresponds to the covering of the theatre and gives an inside overlooking to the different activities.
The external front of the building comes out to be a very closed one.
Only partly glazed and treated with reflecting materials, this façade exploits the inclined plane shapes to reflect the surrounding industrial scenery, creating, this way, a strong effect of abstraction that “dissolves” the new building outline into the surrounding context.
