Uffici Giorgio Armani

In 2000 Giorgio Armani entrusted to AMDL and to Tadao Ando the layout design of the new headquarters of his fashion house in Via Bergognone in Milan, an area of over 10,000 m² occupied by anonymous industrial buildings with one or two floors, which previously belonged to Nestlé.
AMDL redesigned the existing spaces for all the operational functions: offices, showroom, tailoring workshops, reception spaces and storerooms. Tadao Ando created a theatre for fashion shows with reception room attached.
The two functional blocks interact with each other with discretion and respect: as a project concept, there is no forced division but communion in difference.
The arrangement of the buildings privileges the aspects of continuity, openness and transparency: the windows onto the internal courtyard have been widened over their full height, the entrances have sliding doors with large glass walls and the decks between the floors have been cut to define intermediate levels. In the central volume of the offices, to distinguish the entire structure, a raised walkway has been created consisting of stairways and bridged passageways. The essential image of the communal zones has not prevented the industrial appearance of the complex from being safeguarded: the simple façades and the roofs of the sheds with their curved concrete beams have been conserved.