OPEN HOUSE. PIUARCH@DOLCE&GABBANA;: A BUILDING, AN EXHIBITION, A BOOK - YMAG - magazine architettura, design, ailati riflessi dal futuro padiglione italia biennale di venezia

what's up in viapiranesi >> OPEN HOUSE. PIUARCH@DOLCE&GABBANA;: A BUILDING, AN EXHIBITION, A BOOK

04/14/2011

all images courtesy of piuarch

Opening 14th April 2011

April 15th – 16th 2011
Dolce&Gabbana
via Broggi 23,
Milan
from 3pm to 10 pm
Entrance upon accreditation to be requested to: openhouse@piuarch.it

Dolce & Gabbana open their Via Broggi quarters’ doors and presents:
Open House – Piuarch@Dolce & Gabbana to the public of the Fuorisalone.

A Building, an exhibition and a book design a three dimensional portrait of the architects firm Piuarch, in a tale-path developed by Luca Molinari and Simona Galateo, presenting the projects developed both for Dolce & Gabbana and for other Italian and International contractors.

D&G Milan Headquarters, project: Piuarch, photo © Andea Martiradonna

Milan, Via Broggi at the corner with Via Zambeletti, here, since 2006, is one of the Milanese quarters of Dolce & Gabbana. A fully glassed, almost immaterial prism, which becomes a lantern diffusing light and showcasing the clothes of the maison.

The project is signed by Piuarch, founded by Francesco Fresa, Germán Fuenmayor, Gino Garbellini and Monica Tricario in Milan in 1996. With Open House – Piuarch@Dolce&Gabbana, the Porta Venezia building is opened for the first time to the Fuorisalone audience, featuring the portrait of one of the most avant-garde firms. Able to produce absolute spaces, made of light and air, the style of Piuarch is mirrored in the essentiality of shapes, in the vertical panels composing the façade, in the great staircases and in the rhythmic lighting of the Broggi quarters.

sketch by Piuarch for D&G Milan headquarters in Milan

Here the models, the sketches and the images of the firm’s works are presented maintain the showroom feel of the building intact.“We believe they are great project developers, they were able to interpret our ideas, they are balanced and precise but also very Italian, thankfully. We have completed very beautiful projects with them, and we still are. We have found a very productive synergy and a good balance” Domenico Dolce e Stefano Gabbana.

On show, the projects dedicated to Dolce & Gabbana – the Via Goldoni Headquarters, the multifunctional space of the Metropol and the Incisa Val D’Arno Factory – are alternated with other projects developed and produced by the firm from 1996 to today: from the new Business Centre Quattro Corti in St. Petersbourg, which represents, after 200 years, the comeback of Italian architecture in the city founded by Peter the Great, to the enlargement of the Teatro i theatre in the Darsena area, from the Bentini Faenza Headquarters finished in 2010 up to the building for offices and showroom in the new Porta Nuova area, still under construction in Milan. And more, the Village residence in Segrate and the new congress centre of Riva del Garda, winner of an international prize in 2007, and many more.

Piuarch, Porta Nuova Building,Milan

This tale is accompanied, almost subtitled, by the pages of the book, Piuarch. Works and Projects published by Skira which completes and delves deeply in the works of the firm founded by Francesco Fresa, Germán Fuenmayor, Gino Garbellini and Monica Tricario. “Four partners, four people who have given up the idea of solitary work to shape a new way of working together, and taking the road of autonomous, international work. The meeting with the illuministic yet Mediterranean fashion of Dolce & Gabbana has made this path even stronger and more dedicated, showing how only at the borders of different disciplines we can find the true antibodies of evolution” explains Luca Molinari. “Today Piuarch look ahead and offer a possible way to live the metropolitan landscape of the future in a positive way” Open House – Piuarch@Dolce&Gabbana translates this path.

Francesco Fresa, Germàn Fuenmayor, Gino Garbellini and Monica Tricario formed the Piuarch studio in 1996 out of a desire to merge different experiences into a shared architectural project. Over the years, Piuarch has grown to become a group of more than forty architects and engineers from various parts of the world, led by the four partners and by Cristina Castelli, Luca Lazzerotti, Andrés Mahdjoubian, Mauro Mandelli, Gianni Mollo and Miguel Pallarés, associates of the firm since 2008.

The studio is located in an open space in a former industrial building that once hosted a typography business in Brera, in the centre of Milan. Here, Piuarch designs office and residential complexes, boutiques and even urban plans. Starting with its first project, a subsidized housing complex in Sesto San Giovanni, Piuarch’s research has been concentrated on architectural quality, with particular regard to the use of natural materials, attention to detail, the use of natural light, the dialogue between architecture and its context, and the relationship between architecture and art.
The encounter with Dolce&Gabbana marked the beginning of a collaboration that has been going on for ten years and that has resulted in the realization of more than forty boutiques all over the world, the Milan headquarters of Dolce&Gabbana and D&G, the Metropol theatre and the Factory in Incisa in Val d’Arno. Piuarch has won first prize in several architectural competitions: the Ansaldo City of Cultures project along with David Chipperfield (1999), the project for new social spaces in Rione Cavalleggeri in Naples (1999), the new Congress Centre in Riva del Garda (2007), the office building in the Porta Nuova quarter of Milan (2006 – under construction), the expansion of the Collegio di Milano (2007).

In recent years Piuarch has developed a number of projects abroad. It is active in Russia - with projects in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi and Gelenjik - in China and Algeria. Piuarch has won numerous recognitions over the years, including the ones for Bauwelt Preis (2001) and for the Young Architects Award – Accademia Nazionale di San Luca (2003); Piuarch was given an honourable mention for Emerging Architects - The Architectural Review (2006) and for the Medaglia d'oro all'architettura italiana - Triennale di Milano (2009). In 2010 it was selected to participate in the Italian pavilion for the 12th International Architecture Exhibition Biennale in Venice.

THE BUILDING: THE QUARTERS OF VIA BROGGI
An illuminated, transparent box which brings fashion, clothes and colours into town, so that everyone can see them. A sophisticated, contemporary display in the stone-built XX century city; a new building that integrates two pre-existent architectures, making a brand new meaning out of them. Architecture no longer consumes new territory; it generously re-invents the already existent one instead.

photo © Alberto Piovano

The Milan headquarters of D&G is the result of a careful process of consolidation and remodelling of the two adjacent buildings, one dating from the 1920s and the other from the 1960s. The contrast between volumes upon which the design plays is very effective, enabling the two structures, one classical and one contemporary, to carry on a perfectly harmonious dialogue between themselves and with the surrounding urban context. The façade of the most recent building has been completely redone in glass, its rhythm marked out by a series of vertical blinds in opal glass. The volume is bounded by three streets to form a single glass block, simple yet of great visual impact, thanks to the play of light and shadow that enlivens the building during both day and night. The transparency and simplicity of the architecture result in a volume screened by vertical elements while remaining open to daylight and to the view of passers-by, who can admire the clothing hanging on the racks that run the entire perimeter of the façade.

photo © Ruy Teixeira

With five floors above ground and two below, the complex hosts the offices and meeting rooms in the older building, while the newer structure contains the open-space showrooms, which occupy three floors, with the top floor consisting of small terraces created by the configuration of the volumes of the restaurant. The ground floor opens onto an interior courtyard paved with white stones bordered by sinuously contoured garden areas. Also facing the courtyard is the new structure that connects the two buildings, faced entirely in glass and articulated by the sheet metal of the staircases inside. The interior is characterized by the pairing of metals—polished steel for the load-bearing elements and sheet metal for the horizontal surfaces.
The decision to use natural materials like Namibia stone and transparent and reflective materials like glass and polished steel generates a play of lighting effects through the entire building, enabling to change its aspect depending on the time of day, and to be both eclectic and sophisticated at the same time, in perfect keeping with the style of the clients.

photo © Alberto Piovano

typology Offices – Showrooms
built area 5000 mq
location Milan, Italy
year 2005–2006
architectural design Piuarch. Francesco Fresa, Germán Fuenmayor, Gino Garbellini, Monica Tricario
project leader Miguel Pallarès and Luca Lazzerotti, Magali Roig Liverato, Fortuna Parente

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