A new step of Milan’s development has been realized with the completion of the new Allianz tower after four years of construction. Formerly known as ‘Il Dritto’, (‘the straight one’) in this new Milan urban area will eventually be joined by highrises by Zaha Hadid and Daniel Libeskind.

The skyscraper has been designed by architects Arata Isozaki and Andrea Maffei. Standing at a total height of 242 meters, the Allianz tower is now the tallest building in Italy, if you don't have in consideration the spire of Cesar Pelli’s Unicredit Complex, also in Milan. The floor plan, measuring a total of 21×58 meters, have a narrow footprint that accentuates the building’s verticality, with a slender shape extending above Milan’s existing urban fabric.

Description of the project by Arata Isozaki + Andrea Maffe

Milan is the city that best represents the international face of Italy, comparable to London, Frankfurt, Paris. Unlike many historical Italian cities, Milan is more related to its development in the nineteenth and twentieth century, to be more precise after the industrial revolution.

In this sense, design in Milan is compared with the more contemporary face of Italy, made up of factories, subways, concrete and steel and not so much of particular historical presences. Witness is the fact that the Futurist movement has developed mainly in Milan, a movement created to respond to the issues of the contemporary city. It was not a particularly important relationship with the large existing masterpieces, but rather a reflection on the themes of the contemporary city.

To develop the project, we immediately thought it was not interesting to rely on a single architect for the design of the whole complex, but to start a dialogue. Due to the size of the area we decided to aspire to re-interpret the complexity of the city through many architects who brought the idea of buildings with different shapes and materials.

In any street in Milan there are buildings from different periods and with different architectural features. From this belongs the life of a city, in the dynamic tension between the works of later periods in an archipelago of images and colors. This was our ambition, choosing to work in a group.

In our archipelago forms, we found interesting to develop the idea of ​​a skyscraper without a limit, a kind of endless tower. Now we find skyscrapers of any shape and decoration in all parts of the world. Starting from this study, we looked to a fascinating concept to be applied to high-rise buildings, instead of studying only a shape of an aesthetic beauty.

In the aspiration of maximum verticality and tension towards the sky, it was a limit to choose a complete shape and concluded at a certain height and we preferred to apply the concept of a modular system that can be repeated in an infinite way with any limit.

The module we decided is composed by 6 office floors with a long thin plan of 24x61.5m. The choice of these proportions is finalised  to make the whole volume thinner to emphasize the verticality and makes it structurally provocative, due to the slender shape so high.

The facade of the module is composed by a triple glass unit slightly curved to outside. The vertical succession of rounded forms create a feeling of slight vibration of the volume of the building as it rises upward. Elevations of the short sides are fully glazed and show the mechanical series of panoramic lifts going up and down to the various floors of the building.

The idea of ​​endless tower can be compared to previous ambitions of other artists as Constantin Brancusi, for example, who in 1937-38 installed one of his endless column of Targu-Jiu in the park to create repeatable systems indefinitely. When asked about the reasons for this idea, Brancusi replied: "We need to support the vault of heaven."

CREDITS. DATA SHEET.-

Architects.- Arata Isozaki , Andrea Maffei.
Design Team.- Pietro Bertozzi, Takeshi Miura, Alessandra De Stefani, Chiara Zandri, Vincenzo Carapellese, Roberto Balduzzi, Francesca Chezzi, Takatoshi Oki, Stefano Bergagna, Paolo Evolvi, Elisabetta Borgiotti, Davide Cazzaniga, Adolfo Berardozzi, Hidenari Arai, Higaki Seisuke, Taro Hayashi, Takuichiro Yamamoto, Giuliano Godoli, Giorgio Ramponi, Carlotta Maranesi, Atsuko Suzuki, Sofia Bedynski, Antonietta Bavaro, Mauro Mazzali, Sofia Cattinari, Haruna Watanabe, Madoka Tomita, Ayako Fujisawa.
Structure.- Competition.- Mutsuro Sasaki, Hiroki Kume, Takeshi Suzuki / Sasaki and Partners, Tokyo. Project.- Maurizio Teora, Luca Buzzoni, David Scott, Matteo Baffetti, Valeria Migliori, Francesco Petrella, Angelo Mussi / Arup, Milano and New York, basement structures: Holzner Bertagnolli, Cap Engineering.
Façades.- Mikkel Kragh, Mauricio Cardenas, Matteo Orlandi, Maria Meizoso, Carlos Prada / Arup Milano and Madrid.
Plants.- Competition.- P.T. Morimura, Tokyo. Project.- Gianfranco Ariatta, Roberto Menghini, Riccardo Lucchese, Sylvia Zoppo Vigna, Andrea Ambrosi / Ariatta Ingegneria dei sistemi, Milano.
Fire Project.- Ing. Salvatore Mistretta, Milano.
Vertical Transportation.- Hans Jappsen / Jappsen Ingenieure, Frankfurt.
Lighting Design.- LPA – Light Planners Associates, Tokyo.
LEED certification.- Fabio Viero, Gioargio Butturini / Manens-Tifs s.p.a.
Project Management.- Giorgio Montagna, Valentina Guagenti, Francesca Milani, Valentina Grassi / J&A, Milano, Alberto Ferrari, Pietro Baccarelli / Ramboll, London.
General Contractors.- Colombo Costruzioni S.p.A. , Focchi S.p.A.
Construction Manager.- Claudio Guido / In.Pro s.r.l.
Construction Documents.- Andrea Matricardi / Mpartner, Franco Mola / ECDS, Francesco Iorio / Studio Iorio, Michele Capè / Studio Capè, Ariatta Ingegneria dei Sistemi.
Construction Security.- Donato Bertoncelli / Gestione Progetti.
Cost Control.- Aldo Bottini, Stefano Rocca / BMS Progetti.

Client.- Citylife S.p.A. / Armando Borghi, Marco Beccati - project director, Roberta Pasinetti - technical director, Roberto Russo, Andrea Zerbini, Gianni Armas, Martino Negri.
Area.- 81615.0 sqm.
Project Year.- Competition.- 2004. Design.- 2005-2011. Construction.- 2012 – 2015.
Gross floor area above ground.- 81.615 sqm.
Gross floor area below ground.- 44.485 sqm.
Height.- 242 m.

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Arata Isozaki, (born in 1931 in Oita Prefecture - d. Dec 28th, 2022 inOkinawa, Japan), Isozaki is a world-renowned and one of the Japan’s leading architects. He established Arata Isozaki & Associates in 1963. His representative architectural works include Oita Prefectural Library (present Art Plaza), The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma, Art Tower Mito, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Nara Centennial Hall, Akiyoshidai International Art Village, Shanghai Himalaya Center, Qatar National Convention Center.

He is the recipient of the Annual Prize, Architectural Institute of Japan, for the Ōita Prefectural Library and The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma (1967 and 1975 respectively, Japan), L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1997 Officier, France), RIBA Gold Medal for architecture (1986 United Kingdom), Leone d’Oro, Venice Architectural Biennale, as commissioner of Japanese Pavilion (1996 Italy), Gran Cruz de la Orden del Mérito Civil (1997 Spain), Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana (2007 Italy), and The Lorenzo il Magnifico Lifetime Achievement Award, Florence Biennale (2017). He was an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Arts (1994) and the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1998), and a member of the Japan Arts Academy (2017). He was appointed to the first Pritzker Prize Jury in 1979, and continued on as a member for five additional years.

Solo exhibitions featuring the work of Isozaki have included Arata Isozaki: Architecture 1960-1990 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (California, USA) and Tokyo Station Gallery (Tokyo, Japan); Arata Isozaki: Works in Architecture at the Brooklyn Museum (New York, USA), Galleria D’ Arte Moderna, Comune di Bologna (Bologna, Italy), The Netherlands Architecture Institute (Rotterdam, The Netherlands), The National British Architecture Institute (London, United Kingdom), Miro Museum (Barcelona, Spain) and Moni Lazariston (Thessaloniki, Greece); Arata Isozaki – Electric Labyrinth at Castello di Rivoli, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea (Torino, Italy) and Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art (Porto, Portugal); and Arata Isozaki UNBUILT at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (Beijing, China), Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Centre (Shanghai, China) and Guangdong Museum of Art (Guangzhou, China).

Isozaki has served as a visiting professor at several U.S. universities including: Columbia University, New York (New York, USA); Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, USA) and Yale University (New Haven, Connecticut, USA). He is based in Okinawa with offices operating in Japan, China, Italy and Spain.

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Published on: November 24, 2015
Cite: "ALLIANZ Tower by Arata Isozaki and Andrea Maffei" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/allianz-tower-arata-isozaki-and-andrea-maffei> ISSN 1139-6415
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