15 must-read articles about Milan published this year

Among the publications of Domusweb in these uncertain months, a selection of articles including photos of the desolate metropolis during the lockdown and the great architectures that have always characterized it.

Milano

Maurizio Montagna goes on a photographic tour in a quarantined Milan

The architectural photographer’s pictures, taken exclusively for Domus around the outer ring-road of the Italian city, capture the outskirts that we can no longer look at. We wanted to observe the Milan of the Milanese people. We just had to find the right photographer and Maurizio Montagna enthusiastically accepted the challenge. Milanese by birth and inclination, he has 20 years of architectural photography to his name and has exhibited his work worldwide, including at the Venice Architecture Biennale. “I’ll do it for Milan.” he said. Read full article here.

Are the lights at San Siro going to be switched off forever?

What we are used to call the “Scala of football” could be destined to disappear. Roberto Conte photographs Milan’s stadium one last time for Domus. Monuments are messages written in stone to pass on values, emotions, and experiences to the subsequent generations. Not all monuments were designed to be monuments. Sometimes, they become such after a lot of time and effort. This is the case of the Meazza Stadium in Milan, for which the end may come before time, neglect and loneliness devour it. Read full article here.

Ventura Projects closes. Founder Margriet Vollenberg explains why

Lee Broom, Time Machine, Ventura Centrale 2017. Photo Andrea Astesiano

It was born to highlight the work of very young designers and design students, with the popular formats of Ventura Lambrate – that was literally like having a piece of The Netherlands in north-east Milano –, and the scenic Ventura Centrale, in the abandoned depots of the city’s Central Station. “The world where Ventura Projects was born doesn’t exist anymore”, says the founder of the most popular section at Milan Design Week, explaining why she decided to shut it down, remembering the good old moments. Is this the end of a utopia? Read full article here.

What I saw crossing Milan on foot from north to south

Corso Buenos Aires, Milan. Photo Gabriele Ferraresi

From Cologno to Assago going through the city, from north to south, in a day’s journey and 26 km. Gabriele Ferraresi documents his annual crossing of Milan on foot. “I am there because every year for the past ten years I have been embarking on this small venture, which is my trip through Milan. It’s a small venture because it’s really within everyone’s reach, even without training, and it can be completed in less than a day’s walk; but it’s still a venture, something that not everyone does, or feels like doing, or thinks about doing.” Read full article here.

Milan’s empty billboards portrayed by Giovanni Hänninen

Halfway between architectural photography and social investigation, Giovanni Hänninen’s new work on the blank advertisement billboards in Milan will be hosted by Arch Week Marathon. Knowing that the city is not still but rather in pause, Hänninen sees this missing piece as “a metaphor for the times we’re living in” and, again in his own words, “the search for the billboards across the whole city becomes an excuse to story–tell the life during this momentous emergency”.  Read full article here.

Urban inventory: the iconic benches of Milan

In recent decades, the city of Milan has grown in terms of public and private investment. A certain flexibility granted to large real estate investors has, in return, guaranteed the birth of new services for the city and the public space generated by these urban transformations is necessarily an expression of this pluralism.
 Auteur or not, produced in series or site specific, a collection of fixed historical and brand new seatings that mark the urban landscape of Milan. Read full article here.

Achille Castiglioni and Milan: a beer house, a pavilion and a showroom

Achille and Piergiacomo Castiglioni, RAI Pavilion, XLIII Fiera di Milano, 1965. From Domus 445, September 1966

During the roaring decades following World War II, the Milanese architect’s installations where the ultimate stage for the cosmopolitan recital of a rising city. At the time, Castiglioni was regularly featured on Domus. The comments of the magazine’s editors on four of his projects, very different in terms of their shapes and functions, provide an interesting clue on this topic. Read full article here.

Exploring Milan through the eyes of the Domus Archives

Domus is opening its archives and revisiting the history of Milan’s iconic architecture for the first Discovering Cities tour featuring the city. An overview of public and private interior designs dating from the boom years. Read full article here.

A stroll around the home of... Ernesto Nathan Rogers, an explorer in Milan

We lived the period of quarantine surrounded by books, abstract pictures and Peruvian artefacts. Our homes express who we are. And what do other people’s homes tell us? We are taking a stroll through the archives, in the homes of key figures for Domus: the first appointment is at the home of Ernesto Nathan Rogers, in Milan. Pictures by Capogrossi and Calder, a Japanese lamp, a Chinese print over the bed, Madagascan mats and an old rocking chair in bent wood. Read full article here.

Luigi Mattioni, the architect who gave a new shape to post-war Milan

Luigi Mattioni’s architecture belongs to the everyday landscape of those who walk the streets of Milan on a daily basis. They are recognizable, familiar buildings, many of which stand in correspondence of the most important squares and avenues of the city. However, despite being part of one of the most consistent productions of post-war Italy, only a few can be traced back to their designer. From the Centro Diaz to the Grattacielo in Piazza della Repubblica, the work of Mattioni that reshaped the Milan of the economic boom in the name of modularity and vertical development. Read full article here.

Stratifications and translations define Milan housing building

Born from the collaboration between Eisenman Architects, Degli Esposti Architetti and AZstudio, the Residenze Carlo Erba housing building is embedded in Milan’s urban fabric, from which it stands out for its contemporary language, without however rejecting the canons of modern Milanese tradition. The long sinuous volume is composed of four slightly misaligned horizontal strips. Read full article here.

An illustrator’s house that looks like his drawings

Architect Elena Martucci curated the renovation of the home studio of the Italian illustrator Alessandro Gottardo, aka Shout, with the aim of optimizing livability and provide an environment conducive to creation. Overlooking Parco Sempione, the 120 square meters apartment has been stripped of all the interventions following its construction and has not provided significant changes to the layout. Read full article here. 

Pirelli: headquarters in Milan now completed with Renaissance highlights

Designed by Onsitestudio, the Building Cinturato is now open and is entirely dedicated to collective services for Pirelli employees. The architecture consists of a three-storey building, a second body entirely glazed and the outdoor spaces such as the square towards the Pirelli foundation and the paths that lead into the garden. Read full article here.

Photos of the condominium entrances in Milan

The collection Condomini Milanesi, born from the Sunday trips of the photographer Federico Torra, is a series of shots that capture a particular place in the Milanese condominium, the one between the private apartments and the public of the street, “where often the feeling is to cross a threshold of intimacy of places”: the entrances. Read full article here.

An interior with a curtain: living in Modern Milan

All the protagonists of this Milanese project are 30 or younger. Fōndaco studio’s group consists of architects, but also graphics and photographers from all over the world – but they’re all the same age of the client. They were given the opportunity to work on an 85 sqm apartment in a residential building in Via Botta 43, near Porta Romana, designed in the ‘60s by Gian Paolo Valenti. Read full article here.

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