The Bovisa district, once the center of the Italian chemical industry and symbol of industrial Milano, is currently in the midst of one of the city’s key urban re-qualification processes, which began with the opening of a new branch of the Polytechnic in the early 1990s and the railway through-line in 1997.
Planning for Milano’s Bovisa branch of the Polytechnic officially got under way in 1989, and classes were begun in 1994 at what is today’s Via Durando location, inside the restructured Ceretti & Tanfani factory, which once produced cables for cableways. Bright colors denote the restructuring intervention, as do large pieces of cast metals found on the original site, now colored and proposed as sculptures.
The first section to be re-qualified is comprised of historical buildings which today house classrooms, laboratories, offices, library services and reception. The building that formerly housed worker dressing rooms today contains Polytechnic laboratories, a printing center and cafe’. The large gray, red and blue linear building that lies at the center of the campus is home to the Laboratory for Transport Safety. Behind that is a large gray and yellow building, as well as the new PK building, which is red, blue and yellow, and features an inclined glass facade. Two more buildings are currently being designed: a swimming facility and a multi-functional gymnasium, to complete the new Bovisa complex and provide expanded services for the area.