Microsoft Milan

New construction of entrance pergola, facades, landscape design and a new kindergarten for the new headquarters of Microsoft, Milan.

The pergola used in this project are an attempt to search for establish connections.
They try to create shadow at the central access to the building, a place where we have no possibility to plant trees.
The project started when the design of the three office buildings was finished, so in a way it “repeats” what was already there and redesigns these existing buildings that fixed the place. Furthermore, the project deals with the aspect of invisibility: Although these pergolas are evidently visible, they express an effort of introducing something that didn’t exist in the thought process of placing these volumes on this site. One can say that the project tries to introduce a kind of intermediate landscape between the agricultural fields that define this area and the profile of the buildings of the new headquarters for the Microsoft Company.

We wanted this structure to grow as a promenade between these two elements. The pergola expresses also a celebration of the team-work that is desired in the interior of these buildings. They bring to mind the way of walking together to work as a big unit, defining a kind of small-scale urban space amongst the several buildings.

The project tries to introduce the capacity of dialogue among the three new buildings for Microsoft, filling the void that is left there, and bringing the façades of the opposite sides closer to each other.

The project is a comment to the three existing buildings. From a formal point of view, it can be seen as a sequence of horizontal stripes, within the linear movement of the entrance course, that bring together the opposite sides of the Microsoft buildings.