Velodromo Maspes-Vigorelli is given a new life. A life that resurges from the glory of its past. The structure regains the unicity and contemporanity of its architecture through a careful unvealing of the essence of its past architecture. A floating stripped roof hovers above the landscape of the newly regenerated "Quartiere Storico di Fiera Milano", It floats and opens a whole ground open for people to gather, enjoy and celebrate the events taking place within its precincts. Once a Velodrome, this new structure seems to gain a 'new' skin. A skin emerging from the past, it unveils the seating strips wraps around their back and covers up the roof. It filters out the light allowing the celebration of events and the affirmation of this public facility as a beacon for the city of Milano.
An Urban Project: Opening Velodromo Maspes-Vigorelli to the public:
The project is integrated into the city and the newly developped area. With the new transparent, visible commercial facilities installed on its ground floor, it becomes a magnet for users of the towers as well is the inhabitants of the city. The project operates thus as a hinge linking both sides of Milano. Celebrating at one point the heritage and the future.
'Opening' the structure on the ground floor is thus important to allow the building to become porous to the public. The structure can operate even if no major sports events are happening with it.
A point of reference:
For the Velodromo to operate as a new 'center' it has to embody an seductive architecture. The decision to emphasize the skin of this facility and its floating aspect serve this purpose. It becomes visible with its surface reflecting the surrounding landscape and its fins filtering the lit structure at night.
The architectural language of this project hovers itself in between the City of Milan's heritage and the new developments.
The intervention maintain all the original structure and elements as the building is protected by the heritage office (SOPRINTENDENZA PER I BENI ARCHITETTONICI) and the original wooden track designed by the architect Clemens Schuermann is also mantained as a tecnological and historical memory.