Coworking space is by definition a community environment that offers multiple spatial opportunities to create networks and synergies. Designing a coworking is like designing a small town or a large collective home.
Each aggregating site is a useful space for coworking, which has as a philosophy to favour multiple exchanges, from formal to informal and spontaneous ones. Even a hidden corner, if well designed, can become a great place for meeting and conviviality.
Following all these principles the new project of Spaces Milano goes beyond from a first generation of coworking, who exclusively emphasize the informal and playful image, in alternative of the excessively corporate characterization of the ‘international style’ office projects. Overcoming this dichotomy, Spaces Milan takes advantage of both of these cultural approaches. The common spaces, even though organized according to principles that support social interactions, have been conceived with rigorous attention of the aesthetic of its details and materials. A project that is more similar to a private interior house than a collective space design.
The strength of the project Spaces Milano relies on combining the informal model of this kind of spaces with the sensible aesthetic and rigorousness of the city, of its buildings and its famous entrances, recently celebrated by the new Taschen book entitled Entryways of Milan – Ingressi di Milano.
Like in the traditional entryways of the city the team of architects design is a contemporary combination of urban materials with softly warm domestic atmosphere.
The custom-made American walnut bespoke furniture, the great Italian and Nordic design pieces, the soft, yet warm fabrics, perfectly fit an essential and rigorous environment made of concrete and Ceppo stone surfaces. The materials are strongly linked to the rationalist tradition of Milan. The stone of the Milanese entrances is here reinterpreted and reconsidered to enhance the relationship with other materials and becomes a real architectural furniture.
The project is situated in inner hart of Porta Nuova, not far the new Feltrinelli Fundation by Herzog e De Meruon and from the business district designed by Cesar Pelli, a new city centre and one of the most interesting examples of urban renovation in Italy. By renovating 4,000 sq of a traditional second post war building the project reverberates on it’s context with sophisticated system of lighting. Seen from outside, lights and lamps on the ground floor are perceived as iridescent architectures, flying carpets that light up the Milanese nights. Next to the entrance and visible from the street crowded by Milanese drivers, a neon light quotes “welcome home, ops we meant welcome at work”, the new generation of coworking space in Milan is already here.
Project bio: Regus co-working renovation, Bastioni di Porta Nuova 21, Milano.
Client: Regus.
Design and Artistic Direction: Laboratorio Permanente, Nicola Russi, Angelica Sylos Labini. With Luca Cozzani, Emanuela Forcolini, Marco di Forenza, alessandro Zanoletti, Francesca Lina Pincella.
Detail Design, Safety managers and Site supervisors: Marina Abate e Carla Gioiella
Constructors: Constructors Italia Srl
Furniture: Arper, Vitra, Hay, Moroso, Kvadrat, Zeitraum, CC-Tapis, Zanotta, Haworth, Dauphin, Fermob.