The Winning Design

Architect Peter Wilson’s design responds to the complex program required by the competition with a brilliant, innovative spatial solution that stands out for its strong continuity between the city’s public space and the library, along with is connected functions.

Despite its imposing scale, the BEIC building conveys a certain intimacy to users and introduces a truly innovative concept of the “house of knowledge”, where digital resources live side-by-side with books. The building has a dual facade and is crossed through by an east-west concourse.

The site on which the building will stand has linear development that mimics the former Porta Vittoria train station facilities. The two entrances open to the east (towards the center of Milan, Viale Umbria and the Marinai d’Italia Park) and with equal importance to the west (toward the new subway station, Viale Mugello and the new sports and recreational complex behind it). The concourse does not run parallel to but straight through the BEIC, connecting the building with the urban network.

A 36 m tall rectangular megaform positions and anchors this cultural and informational center in the urban and regional setting. This is a powerful yet not rhetorical urban affirmation that acts as an invitation, frame and catalyst for its users’ many trajectories and passageways.

The eastern and western entrance ramps fold around the surrounding floors up to the fifth level. With their broad, green lawns, they will have a dual role as both a park and an urban forum. The reading halls’ arms extend from the main building and connect the square in front of the BEIC with the surrounding urban fabric. The terraces of the various departments line a communication forum, a necessary landscape of knowledge. Reading halls nestled in the side walls of the shell and reading stations facing the balconies offer a wide variety of atmospheres. Warm, sound-absorbent materials provide an atmosphere suitable for a library.

A 5 m high basement contains all of the library’s external functions – conference rooms, learning centers, media forums, children’s library with garden and parking areas. With its skylights, the atrium welcomes visitors and provides them with visual orientation of all the departments in the halls above. This leads to the general entrance, information and reference sectors. The reading rooms are on the northern end of the BEIC forum while the areas for consulting one’s own materials are in the east wing and connected to the youth area. The areas for consulting materials being distributed are organized around well lights. The departments are found on three upper levels, facing the BEIC Forum, with storerooms of different sizes connected to the reading wings through ramps. The laboratories and administrative offices are found in the linear three-story section along Via Monte Ortigara.

The furnishings also have an innovative design. The reading tables are conceived as simple, rational, elegant islands of tranquility within the BEIC’s ample spaces. All the reading stations are equipped with an electrical connection and a computer, stowed in a compartment under the table, which is safe and easily accessible. Plans are also being made for the creation of an adjustable table lamp designed specifically for the BEIC, with a metal base and a green glass lampshade.

Bookshelves give libraries distinctive personalities. The BEIC bookshelf is designed as a frame in sturdy, functional steel with a walnut finish. Supplementary equipment includes reading shelves positioned at regular intervals inside the bookcases and informational panels mounted on the bookshelves’ sides. Where needed, bookshelves will be equipped with reading lamps.

The information desks are distinctive with their white, matching, easily recognizable design. Standard rounded edges and tabletop/shelf features allow for the creation of islands in variable formats. Drawers and storage areas beneath the desks will be in trolley form to ensure the greatest possible flexibility. Computers will be stored below the desks in compartments that are safe yet easily accessible.

Announcement of Competition

The Milan City Council’s announcement of competition (an international design competition consisting of a single, anonymous phase with pre-qualification of the competitors) was aimed at introducing a new European-scale library to be created as part of the Program for the Urban Recovery and Sustainable Development of the Territory in the Porta Vittoria area. In particular, the competition pertained to:

1. plans for the new European Library of Information and Culture (denominated as the BEIC);

2. plans for the public and publically used spaces included in the area in question;

3. an indication of policies and criteria for the interventions to be made to the privately used areas in coordination with the BEIC plans and for the organization of the public areas, consistently with the guidelines contained in the DPP (Preliminary Project Document) attached to the announcement.
   

Preliminary Project Document

The DPP is of great interest not only because it was the first document to be formally attached to a design competition announcement by the Milan City Council but also and most importantly because it deals with a project of great interest to the city due to the excellence of its function and its influence on urban redevelopment. As this is a rare and perhaps unique function on a national level, expectations are very high. The library will be located in a strategic area for the region, at a stop on the Passante railway station and just a few stops away by public transportation from the five Milanese universities. The kilometers that separate it from Linate airport can be counted on one hand. It is only a twenty-minute walk away from Piazza del Duomo, the very heart of Milan.

The DPP brings together and summarizes a complex process that began with the identification of its objective within the City’s Urban Policies Organization Document [Documento di Inquadramento delle Politiche Urbanistiche Comunali], taking into account the efforts of all those who contributed to defining the Program for the Urban Recovery and Sustainable Development of the Territory.

The document acknowledges all of this work and responds to the legislatively codified need to clearly and accurately explain the criteria, objectives and requirements of the design demands. A quality preliminary document must bring together the public administration’s planning phase and the actual design phase. The clearer and more definite the economic plan is, the higher the quality of the design response.

Finalists
The groups of finalists were as follows:

Head: Mario Botta, Lugano, Switzerland.
Consultants: Alessandro Foresti, Andreas Kipar, Antonio Migliacci.

Head: Jo Coenen, Maastricht, Netherlands
Design Group: Jo Coenen & Co Architekten BV, Paolo Caputo Partnerships, Studio di Architettura Giorgio Goffi, Studio di Architettura Camillo Botticini, Turner & Townsend Group Limited.

Head: Roberto Collovà, Palermo, Italy.
Design Group: Roberto Collovà, Promontòrio Arquitectos (Joao Perloiro, Joao Luis Ferreira, Paulo Perloiro, Paulo Martins Barata, Pedro Appleton).

Head: Josè Antonio Martínez Lapeña, Barcelona, Spain.

Head: Jose Luis Mateo, Barcelona, Spain.
Design Group: MAP architects, Luca Gazzaniga.

Head: Efisio Pitzalis, Rome, Italy, PHR (Efisio Pitzalis, Geneviève Hanssen, Manuela Raitano) + B&H (Peter Busmann, Godfrid Haberer, Bruno Vennes, Götz Faubel-Gaeb, Antonio Spatafora, Stefan Tebroke).
Consultants: Christoph Luitpold Frommel, Klaus Daniels, Wolfgang Strobl.

Head: Pierre Riboulet, Paris, France.
Design Group: Pierre Riboulet, Mauro Manfrin
Consultants: Arup, Giuliana Gatti, Mariano Barbuscia, Adriano Ponticello, Gruppo 75, Studio Azzurro, Madeleine Jullien, Veronique Chabbert, Società Arwytec.

Head: Umberto Riva, Milan, Italy.
Design Group: E. Battisti, U. Riva.
Members: Umberto Riva, Emilio Battisti, Albori Architetti Associati (E. Almagioni, G. Borella, F. Riva), John Feather, Dario Vanetti, Franco Luraschi, Renato Restelli, Mario Guarnaccia, Gianni Urbano, Luigi Bosoni, Emanuela Guerra.
Consultants: Sandra Bonfiglioli, Francesco Borella, Dario Malosti, Gianni Micheloni, Gianfranco Prini, Piet J. Th. Schoots.

Head: Gino Valle, Udine, Italy.
Design Group: Gino Valle, Sergio Pascolo, Giorgio Macola, Mario Gallinaro, TiFS Ingegneria S.r.L. (Alberto Cavallini, William Stefanutti, Lorenzo Fellin, Giorgio Finotti, Roberto Zecchin)
Consultants: Angela Nuovo, Aldo Coletto.

Head: Peter Wilson, Munich, Germany.
Design Group: Architekturburo Bolles + Wilson, Alterstudio S.A.S (Marco Muscogiuri, Giorgio Faccincani, Matteo Schubert), Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH Degenhardt AHW.