AN AUTOMATED WAREHOUSE, AN ARCHITECTURAL PROJECT

AN AUTOMATED WAREHOUSE, AN ARCHITECTURAL PROJECT

VISMARAVETRO IS UP FOR THE PREMIO ITALIANO DI ARCHITETTURA 

Promoted by La Triennale di Milano and by MAXXI – National Museum of 21st Century Art – and supported by the Italian Ministry of Culture, the Premio italiano di Architettura (Italian Architecture Award) is an annual award established from the experience of the Medaglia d’Oro all’Architettura Italiana (Gold Medal for Italian Architecture) of La Triennale di Milano and the YAP project (Young Architects Program) by MAXXI. The Award aims to enhance Italian architecture by promoting works created by Italian designers or those working in Italy, who are focused on innovation, project quality and architecture’s social role. 

The 2021 edition also features the new Vismaravetro automated warehouse, finished according to the design by Enrico Molteni Architecture: a work that also represents the image and spirit of the company, looking towards the future. 

Located in an industrial area along the SS36 super highway which connects Milan to Lecco and Valtellina, this warehouse stands next to an existing industrial building. At first sight, its square shape might look like that of many manufacturing buildings spread around Brianza. However, its essence appears through light, which reveals its pure, bare essential qualities like those of the brand’s hallmark shower enclosures. 

With a cutting-edge spirit, its lightweight, flexible load-bearing architectural structure is made from interior “furniture”. In fact, the entire building is supported by shelves: a dense network of surfaces and pillars made from the thinnest galvanised steel, which support the metal roof. The modular façades are formed of full-length black and white cellular polycarbonate panels with no rigid joints. 

In the middle of the day, the warehouse is a box of shifting reflections, which change continuously with the movements of the sky and passing glances. But at night, it reveals its hidden side: this is when the neon lights turn on behind the semi-shaded surfaces, revealing the structural frame and offering a glimpse of the huge machine working inside. 

The warehouse finally finishes in a high, narrow space like a Gothic cathedral, packed like a hive with repeated, perfectly organised elements: an endless archive producing a non-stop stream of glass panes, profiles, joints and solutions used to build every project idea, in every corner of the world. 

Project: Enrico Molteni with Ekaterina Golovatyuk 

Photographs: Marco Cappelletti