ASA OFFICE IN MILAN
Asastudio has always shown a particular vocation for the retrofitting and the conversion of disused industrial spaces, as so, all of its branches are located in ex-production buildings renewed with quick restoring strategies.
As beginning of this trend, Milan office is part of one of the first and much-quoted case history of large scale postindustrial retrofitting in Italy, the Ex- Faema conversion in Via Ventura, Lambrate (Milan).
Asa's Milan offices occupy one of the pavilions of the lively complex. It has been the first example of large scale post-industrial retrofitting in Italy, and the fact that at the time it had been published on many specialized magazines and quoted in architectural debates, shows how operations like that tend to generate positive effects on the city.
This "rapid retrofitting strategy" philosophy is such a shared and convincing method that drove Asastudio to always select similar contexts for their own locations. The idea of retrofitting is to intervene on these spaces activating a series of recovery procedures at different levels of depth: they can go from the most meticulous philological restoration interventions to a very low-cost and low speed of completion. It has two advantages:
-a philosophical advantage: it enables legacy reasoning, a sense and respect for the history contained within these settlements, so the aim is to try to maintain obvious traces of the past.
-an economic advantage: it acts at several levels and has multiple strategies, with the possibility to vary them to coexist in space (different rooms of the same building treated at different depths) and in time (a space can be rehabilitated quickly and subsequently, once inserted in the market and made active, it may undergo a step deeper interventions).
Embracing Asastudio's philosophy and the spirit of the place, the conservation intervention follows rapid retrofitting strategies, leaving obvious traces of his past industrial life. After all, how could one compete with the work of time and memory? The various areas of the studio were crafted by adapting the spaces that were once part of the ex-Faema factory
The three levels in which the office is developed are characterized by the use of basic and raw materials, like the dark wood of the flooring, the exposed brickwork structure and the steel window fixtures.The only substantial alterations made are two: between the building's structure and the garden there is now a linear gallery overlooked by a scenic aerial gangway; the cold greenhouse that runs all over the building counting a total area of 300 sqm.
Via Ventura office in addition to the architecture studio is hosting a two-storey house, a guest house and an art gallery. Today it's pavillions host a number of fascinating and prestigious creative activities, shorooms and art galleries, moreover being the focal point of "Fuorisalone" during the Salone del Mobile.
