Bosco della Musica, Milan’s new conservatory in the suburb of Rogoredo

The international design competition for Bosco della Musica (The Music Forest), the second home to Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory of Milan, has a winning team. The solution by Turin-based firm Settanta7 envisages for the former Redaelli site in Rogoredo, on the city’s south-western outskirts, the realization of a complex that brings together all the area’s resources, enhancing its attractiveness and connection to the urban context.

At an increasing distance from the alignment of the motorway and the railway, an auditorium in two blocks (an opaque mosaic-clad volume, a more transparent one), the school for electronic music housed in the preserved half-moon-shaped edificio chimici (chemical labs building) by Enrico Griffini, and a student housing complex for 195 guests will find place. 

The core of the urban-scale strategy is the activation of inclusive ad interactive connections, guaranteed both by the new functions (cultural activities, education, services) and by architectural and urban design choices, with an open pavilion layout – echoeing the curved forms of the pre-existing chemical building – into which squares, pedestrian and light mobility paths are grafted. A solution whose value is particular in Rogoredo, a not-yet-gentrified city outskirt.

The key values identified for the realization of such a delicate intervention are durability and sustainability, sought by integrating the surrounding vegetation, by building in metal and structural Xlam wooden panels, adopting new native essences, and solutions that increase the permeability of the soil and reduce the heat island effect.