At 9 Via Manzoni, in the center of Milan, in front of the Poldi Pezzoli Museum, stands a property, once owned by Prospero Moisè Loria, an enlightened entrepreneur and patron of the arts and founder of the Società Umanitaria, in which we are currently undergoing a complex redevelopment and enhancement project. The building, in pleasant and measured Art Nouveau style, has 6 floors above ground for a gross floor area of 3,000 square meters. The acquisition, managed by Merope Asset Management, involved three different selling parties, and enabled the reunification of the different parts into a single sky-ground property. In this way, the conditions were met for a unified redevelopment to obtain an asset adequate to the demands of a demanding market such as Milan's.
The primary objectives of the redevelopment project are the functional redefinition of the interior spaces, allowing for a diverse mix of commercial functions, the implementation of efficient and sustainable systems to ensure economical and comfortable management of all rooms, the integration of new architectural elements to give a recognizable identity to the intervention without compromising harmony with the surrounding environment, and the adaptation of the existing structures to the new regulations, with particular attention to seismic loads, despite the logistical challenges related to the limited accessibility of the area and the impossibility of using a crane of adequate size.
This is an ambitious operation to realize a new architecture, reinterpreting a historic building from a contemporary perspective to reconnect it with current elements with a strong functional impact, in a discreet and balanced interplay of inserts and reworkings, which naturally dialogue with the pre-existences in a fluid and symbiotic way.
