House of Memory in Milan by Baukuh

In the Milanese business district of Porta Nuova, the local studio baukuh has completed the Casa della Memoria building, which is a combination of a cultural center and a library with an archive. The compact six-story building now houses an archive for five historical institutions from all over Milan, covering an area of 2,500 square meters. The brick building rests on a footprint of 20 x 35 meters and has a height of 17.5 meters. Although the exterior walls are a standard 45 centimeters thick, the structure's massive appearance resembles more of a grain silo or a small fortress. baukuh won the design competition for the new archive building with a budget of 3.6 million euros back in 2011. Their compact form contrasts with the surrounding skyscrapers of Bosco Verticale by Stefano Boeri. The supporting structure and material choice are equally simple. The main construction consists of a reinforced concrete skeleton made of columns and beams with a span of ten meters. On the sides are concrete communication and service cores that serve to stiffen the entire structure. The partition walls inside the building are made of large-format glass panels that extend the full height of the floors. The primary function is the archive, which spans a total of five floors, accessible via a yellow spiral staircase that dominates the entrance hall, which occupies approximately one-third of the entire building. As this is an archive, the number of window openings has been reduced to only those in offices and study rooms. The facade of the brick building features a total of nineteen enlarged images from the Casa della Memoria archive (including portraits of unknown residents as well as historical scenes from the deportations to concentration camps or the liberation of the city after World War II).

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