There is a moment, often overlooked, in the life of buildings. A suspended condition in which what has been is no longer fully present, and what will be has not yet taken shape. Construction sites are usually read as interruptions, necessary pauses in the linear narrative of architecture. And yet, it is precisely in this in-between that new possibilities emerge.

At Filzi25, this moment becomes the project itself.

L’Architettura. Cronache e storia, n. 75, 1962

Located between Stazione Centrale and the unmistakable silhouette of the Pirelli Tower, the former Palazzo Galbani is a significant example of mid-20th-century Milanese architecture. Designed between 1956 and 1959 by Eugenio and Ermenegildo Soncini with Giuseppe Pestalozza, and engineered by Pier Luigi Nervi, the building reflects a season in which structural innovation and architectural clarity were inseparable. Its prefabricated concrete slabs, enabling a column-free floor plan, represent a key moment in post-war architectural and technological research.

Set within Milan's Central Business District along the axis connecting Pirelli and Gioia, the building is undergoing a restoration and redevelopment project designed by Park and promoted by Domo Media, whose vision supports a broader understanding of transformation, one in which the building can already act as an open platform while still in progress.

Park's intervention begins from this condition. Rather than imposing a new identity, the project operates through a process of recognition. Adaptive reuse is not simply a strategy of preservation but a way of thinking: it requires reading what exists, understanding latent qualities, and projecting them forward without erasure. For over two decades, this approach has guided Park's work. Across projects and scales, the practice has consistently treated the built environment as a resource rather than a tabula rasa. Materials, structures, and spatial logics are not obstacles to be overcome but elements to be reinterpreted, extended, and reactivated.

Within this framework, the construction phase itself acquires a different meaning. It is no longer a closed condition but an active field of experimentation. The concept of meanwhile use emerges from this perspective: a way to inhabit transition, to open spaces before their completion, and to test new forms of interaction between architecture and the city.

The arrival of Paris Internationale at Filzi25 takes shape within this vision. For its first Italian edition, the fair enters a building still in transformation, not as a temporary guest but as a catalyst. The unfinished becomes operative. The rawness of the space reframes the experience of art, dissolving conventional boundaries between exhibition, context, and process. The building does not simply host the works; it participates in their perception. Surfaces, depths, and structural rhythms become part of the exhibition language, as visitors move through a space layered with time, where past and future coexist in productive tension.

The fair also extends beyond the exhibition format. The Meanwhile Café, a project by Park, activates the ground floor of Filzi25 for the duration of Paris Internationale, turning it into a place of encounter where materials from previous installations are reassembled into new configurations. The logic of reuse is not abstract but tangible: objects carry traces of other contexts and durations, brought into a new cycle of use. This exploration continues in parallel with The Meanwhile Club, presented by Park during Milan Design Week at the practice's headquarters, extending the same research into a different urban context and format.

What emerges is not a finished image, but a process. A condition in which architecture, art, and the city overlap, generating a shared field of experimentation. Filzi25 becomes more than a project under construction: a platform through which to question the lifecycle of buildings, the temporality of spaces, and the responsibility embedded in design. In a time when the construction industry remains one of the largest consumers of resources, working with what already exists is no longer an option but a necessity. To build today also means to continue.

Photos by Nicola Colella