Milan’s Urban Renaissance
The soaring high-rise structure etched against the sky might be in Los Angeles – if it weren’t for the gray clouds reflected on the glass. But a shiny new building burnishing a street of aged industrial brickwork is the latest trend in Milan. Thanks to the force of Italian manufacturing, fashion houses are creating an urban renaissance.
It’s “Ciao!” to the palazzo and “Hello!” to high tech for some of the biggest names in fashion. In the 1980s, anyone who made it – from Giorgio Armani through Krizia to Gianni Versace – took over a historic building as its fashion headquarters. But the mood has changed in this new millennium. And even those who previously had only modest showrooms in central Milan are calling in the architects and the builders to create a super-space.
The focus of the gargantuan new showrooms is the Savona/Tortona area, southwest of central Milan at the Porta Genova, stretching towards the Naviglio, the city’s canal, and to the increasingly hip Porta Cinese.
Since Armani first took over an old Nestlé chocolate factory in 2001 and had the architect Tadao Ando build a vast, modernist space around a square of limpid water, Savona/Tortona has become a fashion professional’s destination. In retrospect, Armani (who is now creating a new building with the Japanese architect to serve as an archive, exhibition and educational space in 2010) seems visionary. People are now saying that the influx of fashion and media folk is creating Milan’s Chelsea (referring to the New York mix of old industry, new galleries and young urban professionals).
“I hope the city of Milan will create an arts center – then it could be like Bilbao,” says Gildo Zegna, who unveiled in January a new 8,000-square-meter, or 86,000-square-foot, glass, steel and wood headquarters for Ermenegildo Zegna on Via Savona.
Zegna himself refers to the all-encompassing high tech building as a “campus.” And for all its art-and-architecture approach, with a giant apple sculpture in the lobby and windows opening onto a focal space outside, this is a commercial operation, with the soaring staircase and walkways all leading to dedicated selling spaces. It houses offices for global marketing, product development, store planning and sales teams as well as multiple showrooms. And from the top floor, above the central deck courtyard, Zegna can count his high fashion neighbors.
First, there is Diego Della Valle, who has created a massive space for his Hogan and Fay brands on Via Savona and who shares Zegna’s enthusiasm for the area’s regeneration.
“We asked our architects to respect its industrial roots, taking into account that the Hogan headquarters originally were one of the biggest and oldest factories in Milan – and in Italy,” Della Valle says.
“In my opinion, the Savona/Tortona area is becoming a very important reference, not only for fashion, but also for furniture and for the media – considering all the offices that are moving to this area,” he says.
Another famous neighbor, round the corner on Via Stendhal, is Diesel’s Renzo Rosso. He has created a 7,000-square-meter epicenter on five floors for his Only the Brave holding company, which includes Martin Margiela as well as Diesel (plus Diesel Kids and “props,” or accessories). Although the central Diesel headquarters remains in Molvena, outside Venice, its Milan outpost adds to the district’s cool factor.
To fashion folk, used to edging through traffic-clogged streets to get to Super Studio or to the Armani shows, a rosy future of architect-designed wonders, interspersed with streamlined Italian eateries and a dash of culture, still seems way off. And we have heard these claims before. We were told in 2004 that the Garibaldi district, radiating from Corso Como, would be a fashion regeneration zone with, at its heart, the Città della Moda e del Design – Fashion City. Four years down the line and nothing has yet materialized.
Yet Savona/Tortona has certainly changed in the seven years since Armani moved his shows from his city-center palazzo and into Via Bergognone. Perhaps because the fashion designers have a strong commercial purpose, things get done.
Behind the apparent tranquillity of the Armani teatro, the designer has created a brand hub. Eight commercial showrooms, designed in collaboration with the Italian architects Giancarlo and Maurizio Ortelli, house the signature Giorgio Armani collection, Armani Collezioni (its global cash cow), Emporio Armani and the accessories ranges.
Hugo Boss, which opened a new headquarters last year in Via Morimondo in the Navigli area, has also proved forceful in regenerating a famous Milanese space: the historic porcelain workshops of Richard Ginori, known for its two buildings with shed roofs at different angles. Boss has kept the historic brickwork façade and flaunts its industrial architecture, with visible metallic structure, concrete block walls and an industrial cement floor. The result is a 3,000-square-meter area housing a main showroom as well as offices and store rooms.
Are these new buildings symbolic of where Italian fashion stands in this new millennium? The upstart young Italian designers in the 1980s looked to the famous French couture houses and their noble Parisian buildings when they took over the palazzos. Yet the grand buildings will not necessarily be abandoned as new headquarters are created. Della Valle says he has no plans to shutter Tod’s’ home on Corso Venezia and take it up to Via Savona – but rather that he is “restructuring a building next to Tod’s headquarters” in the center.
At Versace, where, a decade after Gianni Versace’s death, the palazzo in Via Gesu remains a monument to the flamboyance, yet deeply rooted classicism, of the designer’s taste, changes are coming.
During the Salone Internazionale del Mobile this April, Versace will inaugurate its new seat. On the site of its former showroom on Via Borgospesso, part of Milan’s luxury “Golden Triangle,” the architects of Studio Spatium have restructured the 17th-century palazzo, extending it over six floors, with a new streamlined façade and 6,000 square meters for the entire Versace design, administration, visual and corporate offices.
Giancarlo Di Risio, Versace’s chief executive, calls it “the perfect ambience to showcase and house our Versace operational headquarters in an ambience that is rich in history, structure and beauty.”
Yet for its fashion shows, Versace has moved – to a theatre in the Porta Cinese district. To be relevant to today’s world, it seems that Milanese designers are looking for some industrial grit to grind in with the glamour. [Link]
