2009 PORTA MILANO, Italy
Texts
IL CIELO IN UNA STANZA
We would like to build the most beautiful space in the world. The most luminous. The most fascinating. With just the mechanisms of Architecture. The simplest, the clearest, the most beautiful.
It would be like a cloud. The most mysterious space, the most surprising, the most exciting. We would like to build a dream, like at the end of stories… a dream come true.
A large, translucent white box measuring 60 meters long, 30 meters wide and 45 high. With a double skin of translucent white glass, an exterior skin and an interior one. Glass walls and glass roof, held by a light internal reticular structure, like cartilage. Accessible for cleaning and maintenance.
On the translucent exterior skin, perforations to capture sunlight. On the interior skin, also translucent, openings in accordance with the exterior skin.
The entrance of direct sunlight would be the counterpoint to the cloud of translucent light that inundates our space. And the solid light would reach and touch the floor. Thus treated and highlighted, the sunlight would move, caressing the walls of our space, surprising the travelers who came to Milan. And it would move them. At night, the entire illuminated box would resemble a large torch, proclaiming itself the Port of Milan, the Porta di Milano. Like a cloud full of light.
The design and project, matured after intense work, is precise, simple and effective. Capable of moving people. And capable of remaining forever in one’s memory and one’s heart.
