Architectural Project:
Studio Albini Associati
Structural Project:
Tekne Ingegneria
Year:
2016
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ROLEX HEADQUARTER MILANO
Milano
Load-bearing structures of the building and external cladding
Studio Albini Associati
In Milan, the design brief for the new Rolex logistics and operations center initially called for the transformation of a 1950s building into a structure conceptually distant from the design of the Rolex headquarters in the historic center, housed in a 19th-century building. Studio Albini developed a project that includes the construction of an entirely new building: an ultramodern structure that uses highly refined steel and high-tech systems and is characterized by an extensive presence of greenery. The first two levels of the building house the work areas of the assistance center, while the top floor, equipped with internal wood-clad sunshades, houses a canteen and a meeting room. A training school for twenty students has been set up in the courtyard. The building's logistics and warehouse departments are located in the basement on two levels. A clean "cut" in the structure, corresponding to the corner formed by the meeting of the two streets, creates a bright triple-height atrium. The structural design, with load-bearing columns placed between the double-skin glass facades, ensures that the floors occupied by the service center and meeting rooms are pillar-free, to allow for easy reconfiguration of the workspaces if necessary. Franco Albini called his designs “rationalized craftsmanship.” This approach was used to design and manufacture the sunshades and screens that are key elements of the Rolex building’s facades. The vertical metal sunshades are motorized and automatically change angle as the sun moves along the exterior surfaces of the street front; 1,000 perforated 1 mm-thick stainless steel screens are placed between the laminated glass.