Palazzo Lombardia

In 2004 the Lombardy Region launched an international design competition. Almost a hundred designers took part, and the group formed by the New York firm Pei Cobb Freed & Partners and the Milan firms Caputo Partnership and Sistema Duemila won it. Works began in 2006 and lasted four years.

The new seat brings together on a single site the offices of the presidency, of the regional executive and of the councillors' departments, in order to rationalise Lombardy's administration, until then scattered across several buildings, at times with high rents. In 2010, when the building was completed, a statue of the Madonnina was placed at 161 m, the city's third. In 2012 the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat gave it its Best Tall Building Europe award.

The low buildings form interweaving curved strands of seven to nine levels, recalling the mountains, valleys and rivers of Lombardy. Each strand is 14 m wide, which lets daylight penetrate to the maximum. At the heart of the complex, the Piazza Città di Lombardia is open to the public and covered by a transparent ETFE roof whose curve recalls Milan's Galleria; it connects with two neighbouring green spaces. The slim tower is born of two curved fragments that intersect, and it reaches 161 m. It sets up a dialogue with the neighbouring Pirelli Tower, pitting an open, double, concave form against Gio Ponti's closed, single, convex one. At its top, a roofed belvedere is adjoined by an open terrace on the level below.

The façade combines two systems: local stone on the end walls facing the streets, linking the complex to Milan's historic urban fabric, and a curved glass curtain wall. A climate wall one metre deep forms a thermal buffer zone, with vertical louvres of perforated aluminium that rotate with the angle of the sun. Heating and cooling come from a geothermal heat pump linked to a subterranean river, with photovoltaic panels on the tower's south side as a supplement.

The ground level, given over to public services, gathers shops, restaurants and bars under arcades and around plazas, along with a nursery school, an auditorium, a fitness room, exhibition space, a post office, a civil registry and a space for the Region itself. Meeting and conference rooms, archives and libraries fill the first floor, with offices above. The Piazza Città di Lombardia has become a setting for concerts, exhibitions, festivals and shows.

The Piazza Città di Lombardia is open to the public. The belvedere on the 39th floor, 161 m up, opens free of charge at certain times of the year: the entrance is through core 1 of the plaza, and the Region announces the planned openings.