Milan-based architecture firm Park Associati designed new Luxottica Digital Factory in Milan, making an important intervention of industrial architectural restoration in collaboration with StorageMilano.
For the company, a world leader in the eyewear market, the architects created an open and flexible container where history, change and creativity find the ideal convergence ground, focusing on technologically innovative materials and cutting-edge architectural solutions.
Taking inspiration from Luxottica’s identity principles while respecting the urban and social fabric of the neighbourhood, Park Associati reinterpreted the existing industrial building – formerly occupied by General Electric – by maintaining its main volumes and, above all, its character, with contemporary top quality additions both to the façade and inside.
The intervention emphasises the building’s original shapes and lines by eliminating any later internal additions and by adapting the building to contemporary safety and sustainability parameters, while preserving the excellent reinforced concrete truss design and enhancing the façade’s vertical shape.
The casing is the result of technological and structural research aimed at lending the building the greatest transparency and indoor brightness. In particular, the daring and startling façade overlooking Via Tortona consists of a full-height glazed structure with vertical bronzed metal pilasters that bring to mind the sheds.
Transparency is reflected onto the internal spaces that are completely reinterpreted to accommodate the new functions: the showroom and some commercial spaces on the ground floor, and the Digital Lab – a high-tech innovation centre – on the first floor.
Designed by storagemilano in collaboration with Park Associati, the interiors are bright and comfortable and benefit from green leisure and informal meeting areas – the internal garden on the ground floor and the green patios on the first floor. The intervention follows a LEED quality and sustainability protocol, and is estimated to be awarded the “GOLD” class.
In conclusion, the Digital Factory helps revitalize an area of the city that from suburban environment has been turned into a vital area, which is thus returned to the urban and social fabric.
