Torre Velasca, Milan

There are few modern buildings in the centre of Milan and Torre Velasca is a rare example. Built in 1957-58 to a design by BBPR Partners (R standing for Ernesto Rogers, cousin to Richard Rogers), it has 26 floors of which the upper 8 floors occupy a larger floor area giving the complete building a highly distinctive mushroom-like appearance. The architects claimed that its form echoed the shape of traditional Lombard defensive structures. Be that as it may, the principle advantage was the provision of additional floor space to maximise the rental potential.

The upper 8 floors of Torre Velasca are occupied by apartments; the lower floors are used for office accommodation. The architects took care to avoid excessive repetition by distributing the fenestration on a semi-random basis. The overall impact of the tower on its surrounding streets is less than might be expected given its stark unembellished presence. The austere concrete façade and the looming upper floors supported by muscular concrete brackets suggest a proto-Brutalism. YouTube has a short film, dialogue heavy (in Italian), for those who want to see more.

Casa Galimberti – an Illustrated Building in Milan

Italian architects developed their own version of Art Nouveau in which they had the freedom to experiment in terms of decoration and ornamentation without feeling any pressure to be innovative in terms of form or spatial organisation. It was given the name Stile Liberty (in honour of the Regent Street department store whose affordable Art Nouveau product lines were much sought after in Italy) and enjoyed its greatest public acceptance in Piedmont and Lombardy – much boosted by the Turin Exhibition in 1902. Most examples of Stile Liberty buildings are formally conservative, Classical and Baroque variants, occasionally with Medievalist elements. Concessions to fashion were confined to the surfaces in the form of carved figures, slithery organic wrought-iron, painted panels and ceramic decorative schemes showing a strong preference for floral or other natural forms. 

Casa Galimberti in Milan is a classic example of a pictorial building – a 1905 apartment block where visual interest derives primarily from the spectacular surface imagery. The architect, Giovanni Battista Bossi (1864-1924), had two designers on his team, one responsible for the figurative ceramic panels that run along the building at first floor level and one for the vertical panels of painted foliage that climb the second and third floors. The figurative panels present a hedonistic vision calculated to grab attention - curvaceous female figures in revealing costume and a few male companions disport themselves, gathering fruit, drinking wine, listening to music and engaging in a little light flirtation. Galimberti was a property developer who bought the site from the city authority when the stables that previously occupied it became redundant as electric trams supplanted the horse-drawn variety. It may well be that a commercial imperative lay behind the decision to surround the building with steamy imagery. 

Machine Age Temple in Milan

One of the less celebrated attractions of Milan is Deposito Messina, a delirious assemblage of cast-iron and glass built in 1912 to accommodate some 150 of the city’s trams. I like to think that the grandeur of this construction reflects the high esteem in which trams are held by the citizens of Milan. It has the air of a building conceived to impress and for the humble tram there can be no better shelter anywhere else. A glazed roof flies high overhead supported on iron piers and trusses while at ground level there are two enormous bays each placed at 45° either side of a central access road. The unprepossessing exterior on Via Messina gives little hint of the glories to be found inside. Not everyone is going to want to trek out to see it for themselves but for those who do, tram routes 12 and 14 from the city centre run along Via Messina. Alight at Cenisio and walk back – less than 5 minutes. 

By 1912 the Italian Futurist love affair with movement and speed was already underway and both Boccioni (The Forces of the Street) and Carrà (What the Tram Told Me) had identified the urban tram as a key emblem of modernity, placing it at the centre of their compositions. This building seems animated by the same spirit – a Machine Age Temple to the Tram. Finally, I must acknowledge the expertise of tram-chaser extraordinaire, Peter Ehrlich, whose invariably splendid photographs brought this wondrous place to my attention. 

Tree House in Milan

Green buildings, clad with vegetation have been around for a decade or more (the example below is from Quai Branly in Paris, 2006) but the recently completed Bosco Verticale in Milan extends the concept to include entire trees. Tree planting has become commonplace in hotel and corporate atriums the world over but this is the first example of trees migrating to the façade of a building. Bosco Verticale comprises two towers, of 18 and 26 floors and is on the edge an enormous regeneration project named Porta Nuova, close to Porta Garibaldi station, north of the city centre. The architect, Stefano Boeri, designed the two blocks with terracing to accommodate up to 730 trees (between 3 and 6m in height) together with 5,000 shrubs and 11,000 perennials. As the years go by and the trees grow it will present a novel management problem to ensure the trees are kept free of disease and pruned to avoid becoming too big for the building. 

The rationale for this adventurous project is to combat air and noise pollution (Milan has some of the worst air quality in Italy) and to offer the residents of the 400 apartments some direct experience of the natural world. There is a lower proportion of open space in Milan than in any other major Italian city. Tests have shown that the tree cover will act as insulation against winter cold and mitigate the build-up of high temperatures in summer sun. What is visible now is only the beginning of the scheme and the foliage looks a little thin at present. When mature in 5 to 10 years time it has the potential to look spectacular. 

Particles in Transit

A busy railway station is a wonderful place for a disengaged observer of human activity. I visit to experience the architectural spaces but the human element cannot be ignored and I find my photographs incidentally record the transient presence of a minor multitude of human types. In the random flow of human particles, patterns emerge and disperse, compositions are formed and dissolved. This is the raw material for these much processed images. The initial photographs were taken in the dramatic internal spaces of Milano Centrale where the grandiose scale diminishes the human presence to sub-molecular proportions. The building resembles a stage set for a totalitarian operatic production in which the travellers form the chorus as they transmigrate across the arena.

Au'voir

Here stands your correspondent, having just extended his perfectly shod feet on to a Parisian platform, courtesy of Edwardian Eurostar. An impeccably gloved hand raises his hat in salute to the City of Light. The arched eyebrows and a certain quiver in the tips of the moustache indicative of the intense powers of observation that distinguish the true flâneur. Note the hand stitching on the custom-made laptop bag and the magnificent lapels on the overcoat. It’s the perfect image of a man of distinction from the great Age of Steam anticipating all the illicit pleasures of city life. It’s just after 4pm and time to find the Salon de Thé. Tomorrow we depart for Paris and Milan in search of adventure. We may be a hundred years too late.

Cathedral of Shopping

This triumphal arch forms the entrance to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in Milan. It stands on the Piazza del Duomo thus uniting the God of Christendom with the God of Commerce. The interior is cruciform in plan with a central octagon. The internal facades are three storeys in height, above them soars an enormous glazed barrel vault complete with central dome. The floor area is entirely covered by a richly decorative scheme of mosaic work and provides an almost absurdly lavish and opulent space in which to shop. The modest shopping arcade as developed in Britain and France is here inflated to the proportions of a grand cathedral and symbolises the need for the newly united Italian nation state to see its sense of self-importance immortalised in architectural form.


Despite the air of exclusivity, the Galleria is open to all and there seems to be a mismatch between the leisure shirts, shorts and trainers worn by most visitors with the sort of clientele that would be likely to patronise the seriously up-market retailers. Apart from the presence of a McDonald’s, there is very little that would come within the spending power of the average shopper. The shop fronts are intimidatingly polished and perfect, repelling all but the most affluent customer.


A cultural footnote with which to conclude. The final scene in Michael Dibdin’s Aurelio Zen novel, Cabal, climaxes with the villain of the piece crashing through the glass of the central dome and plummeting to the mosaic floor below. The corpse touches down on the Coat of Arms of the House of Savoy.