New Milan Trade Fair

Role: Design Team Leader @ Massimiliano Fuksas Studio / Studio Altieri
Location: Rho, Milano, Italy
Client: Confidential
Year: 2003-2004
Status: Built
Size: 43,000sqm
Budget: $700 million
Program:

To attract large-scale world-class conventions and exhibitions, the city of Milan has embarked on an ambitious plan to build a $700 million (2.1 million square feet) exhibition complex. Massimiliano Fuksas has been commissioned to give life to a new project that will host exhibition pavilions, auditoriums, conference rooms, restaurants and cafés, meeting rooms, and office spaces for the administration of the Fair.

Completed in roughly 27 months, the Fiera di Milano is a testament to the determination of Italians to host world-class cultural events. Whilst strikingly epic in scale, it attempts to instill the intimacy of traditional Italian-built environments through the central covered walkway, which blends the much more pedestrian aspects of the ‘Fiera’ into an easily experienced and understandable scale.

The designer addressed the breadth of the 8 separate structures (containing 24 exhibition pavilions) by orienting them inwards towards the central spine covered by a glass canopy that functions similarly to that of a central street. To delimit the various functions of the buildings, the exhibition halls have orange facades facing the canopy, the restaurants and cafés lining the open-air corridor have curvilinear facades and rest on pillars, the meeting rooms are clad in stainless steel and hover above the height of the walkway, and office spaces are contained within glass boxes that line the walkway.

I was hired as a key designer for one of the 24 mono-planar pavilions (43.000m2).
Coordinating contacts between the main designer, local designer, and contractors.
Develop ideas and conceptual narratives
Feasibility studies and 3D computer modeling
Making physical models and 3D computer renderings.