Torre Velasca

The Torre Velasca (in French, Turn Velasca ), with its 26 stages and 106 meters height, is located at number 5 of the homonymous place, in the center of Milan and in the south of the Dôme.

Originators

The building was designed by the agency of architecture BBPR (acronym created with the 1 letter of the patronym of the 4 architects founders of this grouping Gian Luigi Banfi, Lodovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso, Enrico Peressutti and Ernesto Nathan Rogers).

History

The Torre Velasca built between 1956 and 1958 by the Società Generale Immobiliare () occupies a formerly residential zone, destroyed during the bombardments undergone by the city in 1943.

It is in the middle of this zone that the tower is, project which is integrated obviously into the Italian current néo-Liberty (), without allusion however to the style Brutalisme and clearly posts references to Italian rationalist architecture like with the architectural past of the place and the city, according to the theory of the environmental preexistence retained by agency BBPR; thus, the Torre Velasca evokes it the bell-towers of the city, the Dôme and especially the Castello Sforzesco.

With its upper floors built in overhang, the Velasca Tower has a form characteristic of " champignon" and it is one of the most known symbols of the city.

The first eighteen stages are occupied by stores and offices while the last eight are it by apartments.

The profile of the tower is the consequence of a long study which finds its origins in the search for functional answers to the constraint of the position of its base in the small homonymous place.

Sources & references

Marco Bussagli : What architecture? A history of architecture, French adaptation of Jean-Pierre Dauliac, Gründ Editions, Paris 2005, p. 187 (ISBN 2-7000-1223-2)

Random links: