Year: 2006/2007
Client: Mediapason
Teknoarch services: Preliminary, final and executive designs
Location: Milan
Client: Euromilano
Surface area: 12,000 mq
Contract value: € 27,000,000REPORT

The former Tenax area falls within the larger plan to convert the special area "Z7", destined by the Regulatory Plan for detailed executive planning. The objective, shared by the city administration and private firms, is to convert the entire Bovisa area, a project that has already begun with significant investment in the area by the Polytechnic of Milan. These functions are being joined by production, commercial, directional and residential projects. The desired transformation is under way, with a delicate balance between demolition, restorations, restructuring and new construction, the intention being to conserve the most significant historical landmarks of the industrial urban setting and integrate them with the new functions required by the contemporary city. The area was filled with abandoned buildings which were once part of the industrial complex of the Società Italiana dello Smeriglio. It was decided to demolish the buildings in poor condition, neglected and subject to collapse. Following the balanced transformation criteria explained above, it was decided to retain the three-story building at the corner between via Colico and via Cerrobbio, which used to house the company's offices. The building is representative of industrial construction, with extremely sober and functional characteristics. A tower is located at the juncture of the two wings of the building, with a water tank at its summit: this has become a familiar part of the industrial landscape of the Bovisa area. In the project, therefore, it is treated as a symbol of urban continuity. The new stereometric and inverted edifice is intended to reflect an image of the contemporary factory, highly technological. The prefabricated structure is exposed, laying bare the nature of its assembled parts. The body of the building consists of an interior nucleus, highlighted by the use of red cement along the base, at the corners and on the exposed columns of the crown. A second skin in horizontal prefab panels of grayish white cement gives the impression of a hanging wall made of large stone tiles arranged in a giant net. The few openings are shaped like horizontal slits, so as not to reduce the large scale, exhibited by the new "entertainment factory". A body with three floors, completely surfaced in glass, connects the two structures. The complex is further unified by the addition of two "towers", which interact strongly with the one already in place, forming the symbolic and functional nucleus of the television broadcasting station. The first is 20 m tall, and contains the antenna (subject to a separate administrative process), the communications instrument, at its center of gravity, set against the glass body of the connecting structure. It has the classic shape of an electromechanical object: a parallelepiped with a square base, encircled by curved metal tubes that suggest the cylindrical shape of an electromagnet's coil. The other tower is placed asymmetrically on the end of the shorter wing of the pre-existing edifice. It is the "head" of the broadcasting studios, containing the entrance, the executive offices and the large conference hall. Octagonal in shape, it is a crystal prism, shielded by motorized external shades that extend further up and down than the edifice, giving it an ephemeral, lightweight appearance.