Casa della Memoria, National heritage palazzo in Milan, Italy.
Casa della Memoria is a rectangular brick prism of 20 by 35 metres and 17.5 metres high, built 2013–2015 to a design by the baukuh studio, which won the 2011 competition. Two thin end bands holding the archive, services and stairs flank a central section with exhibition rooms on the ground floor and offices above. Its facades are clad in 5 × 5 cm polychrome bricks made by SanMarco, forming nineteen portraits of anonymous Milanese and eight historical scenes.
The building was commissioned by the Comune di Milano to give ANED, ANPI, AIVITER, the Associazione Piazza Fontana 12 Dicembre 1969 and the Istituto nazionale Ferruccio Parri a shared home. Designed by the studio baukuh, winner of the 2011 competition, it was built between 2013 and April 2015.
The building's brick facades carry nineteen portraits of anonymous Milanese and eight historical panels depicting deportation to the concentration camps, the Liberation and the Piazza Fontana bombing of 12 December 1969. The polychrome brickwork, in 5 × 5 cm units, echoes Lombard laterizio decoration such as the Ospedale Maggiore and Santa Maria delle Grazie.
The building stands at the corner of Viale Giovanni Suzzani and Via Federico Confalonieri, near the Biblioteca degli Alberi park and the Lombardy Region headquarters. The ground floor is an open, free-standing level connecting the two end wings that hold the archive and stairs. Visitors cannot consult archive documents directly; the collection is viewed from the yellow spiral staircase.
Visitors cannot consult the archive documents directly: the collection is kept behind the scenes. Instead, the yellow spiral staircase connecting the floors repeatedly brings visitors close to and away from the archive, creating shifting views of the documents and, through them, of the park behind the building.
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