Nestlé Headquarters

Suspended forms and a green courtyard express the building's discreet and open double soul

The Nestlé Italia Headquarters is an architectural landscape developing over several heights on which are constructed the building's volumes. The green embankment at the base of this sheltered landscape offers architectural hints aimed at enhancing its movements by creating a multifaceted vision of shapes and volumes.

At first glance, the building's compact and functional layout could give the structure an inward-looking appearance. However, the building's division into several bodies moves and lightens the headquarters’ composition.

Perceived as suspended boxes of different sizes and heights, these volumes are enriched in places by vertical blades of coloured glass that enhance the building without affecting its transparency.

The transparency of the glass, the vivid cold blue colour and the lively development give this building the false appearance of a 'shy' structure, a protected campus that has in fact been designed to encourage meeting and sharing, open to the light and the greenery that surrounds and inhabits it.

Thanks to the large skylight, the main entrance hall is flooded with natural light and is in direct visual contact with the internal courtyard, which is the core of the project.

Reserved for the exclusive use of Nestlé collaborators, the courtyard is a space balancing between the greenery and the fully glazed internal façade. The hall therefore acts as a lens connecting the courtyard to the external landscape. Conceived as a place for relaxation and sharing, this large but intimate green space increases the building's liveability and the sense of community within the campus.

Covered with terracotta slats in chromatic variations of grey arranged at different angles, the basement is the building's experimental element. Thanks to the jagged and wavy effect produced by the terracotta, the opaque base enhances the building's solidity without weighing it down.

The research on materials led to smart, functional solutions and helped make the Nestlé Headquarters an original and innovative building that also manages to satisfy all the customer requests.

  • Info
    • Location
      Assago (MI)
    • Client
      Brioschi Sviluppo Immobiliare
    • Status
      Completed
    • Year
      2013
    • Area
      22000 m²
    • Energy certifications
      LEED Gold
    • Design team
      Filippo Pagliani, Michele Rossi Marco Siciliano (Project Director) Stefano Lanotte, Lorenzo Merloni, Marco Panzeri, Davide Pojaga, Alessandro Rossi, Elisa Taddei, Paolo Uboldi, Fabio Calciati Marinella Ferrari (Graphics)
  • Awards
    • The Plan Award - Winning project in the ‘Offices’ category
    • International Design Awards - Silver Prize in the 'New Commercial Building' category
  • Publications
  • Monograph

Courtyard

Entrance hall

Photo by: Andrea Martiradonna
Related projects
Salewa Headquarters
Bolzano - 2011
Accenture People Hub
Assago (MI) - 2022
Human Technopole
Milan - 2019