Mi20, a forward-looking rationalist style

The restyling project for Enterprise’s Mi20 Milan headquarters, carried out by the practice Spazi Multipli, stands out for its futuristic design and stark all-white interiors, interrupted only by the black lines that run through the various work spaces. The architects had already worked on the project for the company’s headquarters in Rome. „It’s an interesting coincidence that in both locations we found ourselves interacting with the rationalist architecture of Marcello Piacentini,“ noted the architects. Their approach was to offer a contemporary reinterpretation of the rationalist style. „The project came at a moment in history, shortly before the outbreak of the pandemic, when we realised that architecture needed to address the important issue of a new design for the future. So we continued in the direction already undertaken with the „Navicella“, the spaceship-style building in Rome, and created spaces inspired by the futuristic ideas of science fiction literature. Moreover, the company’s mission of innovation is reflected in its choice of the name Enterprise, a reference to the spaceship in Star Trek. We felt it would be interesting to work on a project that would identify an „architectural brand“ as well as creating a structure designed for working and living comfort.“ The glass volume of the meeting room is one of the highlights of the working areas. „Like the bridge of a spaceship, the volume is fully glazed and looks out on the operational areas, its axes rotated with respect to the rigidly defined orthogonal structure of Piacentini’s architecture. While emphasising its character as an area open to the public, at the same time we created a screening system based on motorised roller blinds to guarantee privacy. The result is a kind of display case, a glass enclosure with sharp, angled lines protected by a wooden frame to emphasise its image and isolate it from the context.“ This display case houses a Plesyus meeting table with an original design. „Like the fossil of a prehistoric animal, it has intentionally artisanal features and materials, as if to tell the story of the company’s soul: open to the future but rooted in Italy’s history, tradition and attention to detail.“ While the working areas are all white, the restrooms are black. „This design choice had already been adopted in the Rome project, where the interiors of the bathrooms stand in open contrast to the finishes and colours of the working areas, just as they do here in Milan.“ To enhance the luminosity of the white interiors, the architects chose the bright, transparent mother-of-pearl look of Ceramica Sant’Agostino’s Akoya marble-effect porcelain tile collection in the shiny Krystal finish. „The light grey veins of the flooring emphasise the whiteness and transparency of the working and executive open spaces, imbuing the architecture with almost imperceptible variations of white and enhancing the reflections of the transparent glass partitions in an interplay of cross-references and iridescent mirrored images.“