Famous Gio Ponti building near the Torre Velasca has been renovated

“The House of the Industrialists” in via Pantano, designed by Gio Ponti, Antonio Fornaroli and Alberto Rosselli's studio in 1962 as a sober and rigorous courtyard building in steel, concrete and glass for the Assolombarda offices, opens up to the city. The project by studio Co3, which redesigns the entrance and courtyard spaces, makes this possible. The atrium on the ground floor, whose original layout had been altered over time by the gradual addition of accessory functions that undermined the unity of Ponti's design, is reconfigured as an urban “filter” between inside and outside, free of incongruous service spaces that are repositioned on a new mezzanine in favour of improved distributive and functional clarity.  

The internal courtyard – previously conceived as a “contemplative” space serving only the palace – is returned to the city as a space for events: a new passageway located close to the atrium, consisting of a wide staircase and a glassed – in volume, introduces visitors to the open-air courtyard, freed from the planters, where a perimeter structure of metal frames around the inner façades supports the climbing vegetation and a removable roof made of sheets and steel cables wrapping the area in the case of public events.