Tires with intellectual demands: the Fondazione Pirelli

When many people think of Pirelli, they think of Formula One, erotic calendars and car tires. The Italian company has been committed to culture and art for a long time and in a variety of ways.

DPirelli's Milan headquarters were built to a design by architect Vittorio Gregotti and are a great allegory for the tire manufacturer's approach to change and tradition. The cube with a full-side glass facade is located on Pirelli's old production site in the Bicocca district in the north of the city, where up to 30,000 people used to work for the company. Only the 40-meter-high white cooling tower for tire production survived the factory's demolition.

Gregotti, one of the country's best-known architects who died of coronavirus at the start of the pandemic in March 2020, declared the concrete tower an objet trouvé and built his cube around it. On the floor of the tower he created an auditorium and at the top, where the water vapor rose into the sky, a circular hall for board meetings. The only surviving element of the discarded Pirelli factory lives on as the heart of the new, modern company headquarters.