Founded in 1902, Milan’s Bocconi University has undergone numerous expansions and renovations over the years. But its latest addition—full of curves and covered in a shimmery metallic skin—is a radical departure from the axial relationships and rectilinear volumes typical of the campus. This time, the school, which specializes in business, opted for a grouping of buildings whose sinuous forms relate to each other like internal organs, bound together by a portico-covered circulatory system and grassy connective tissue. Unsurprisingly, this dynamic scheme is the work of the Pritzker Prize–winning Tokyo firm SANAA.
The architects started by studying Milan’s urban fabric, which informed both the site’s master plan and the buildings’ massing strategy. Previously occupied by a milk-processing plant, the nine-acre property abuts the existing campus to the north, including the School of Economics (2008), designed by fellow Pritzker laureates Grafton Architects, and a busy ring road to the south. This location sits between the city’s dense historic center and spacious more recent developments on its periphery. Straddling these scales, the architects divided the program into separate buildings and interspersed them with a public garden requested by the city. “We wanted to make the building part of the park,” explains SANAA principal Kazuyo Sejima. Combining the Master and Executive academic programs with administrative offices, the MEO cluster (the name is an abbreviation of its three main components) fills the northwest corner of the property, with the gymnasium to the south and the dormitory (SANAA designed only its exterior) to the east, near an existing street connecting to the main campus.
You have 0 complimentary articles remaining.
Unlimited access + premium benefits for as low as $1.99/month.