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Architects: Park Associati
General Contractor: SMV Costruzioni
Client: Luxottica Group SpA
Photographers: Lorenzo Zandri, Andrea Martiradonna, and Nicola Colella - Park Associati
Lead Architect: Lorenzo Merloni Design Team: Filippo Pagliani, Michele Rossi, Michele Versaci, Valeria Donini, Alessandro Bentivegna, Simone Caimi, Ismail Seleit, Marco Vitalini, Cristina Tudela Molino, Luna Pavanello, Sofia Dalmasso, Luca Pazzaglia, Marinella Ferrari, and Mario Frusca
Landscape Architect: Arch. Marco Bay

From energy to technology through architectural quality and experimentation, Milan is enhanced by a new intervention of industrial architectural restoration aimed at accommodating the Digital Factory of Luxottica, a world leader in the eyewear market.

Thanks to the retrofitting intervention, the complex becomes an open and flexible container where history, change, and creativity find the ideal convergence ground. Paying the greatest attention to quality, using technologically innovative materials and seeking cutting-edge architectural solutions are the Digital Factory project’s focal points that take inspiration from Luxottica's identity principles, while paying attention to the peculiar elements of the place and respecting the social fabric of the neighborhood hosting the new structure.

The project reinterprets 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 emphasizes 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. The daring and startling façade overlooking Via Tortona consists of a full-height glazed structure with vertical metal blades 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 center - on the first floor. 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. The Digital Factory helps revitalize an area of the city that from a suburban environment has been turned into a vital area, which is thus returned to the urban and social fabric.