Centrale dell’Acqua Milano: Discover Milan’s Newest Attraction

Jul

Centrale dell’Acqua Milano: Discover Milan’s Newest Attraction

Centrale dell’Acqua Milano: Discover Milan’s Newest Attraction – On July 4th was inaugurated the new Centrale dell’Acqua Milano. What used to be a historic water station is now a space dedicated entirely to the public water supply and how it can be protected and represented.

Milan has a unique relationship with water dating back a number of centuries, as water has played an important role in the city’s military defence, economic and industrial growth over the centuries and is, of course, featured in Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous waterworks projects.

Nowadays, the city lives with the harsh reality of Italy: a society with a very high per capita consumption of bottled water and needs to restore its faith in the public water supply. This is the focus of the new Centrale dell’Acqua Milano, a water station designed by Lombardini22 brands FUD and DEGW in an integrated project including concept design, interior design, layout and physical branding.

At the inauguration, the project was present as a “multi-purpose centre about the public waters supply” with the goal of relaunching this basic service with a systematic vision, starting with the water station’s virtuous history and good management.

The project created by Lombardini22 through its two brands, FUD and DEGW, transformed the renovated water station into a physical place where a number of actions allow visitors to get to know public drinking water in its totality, as a resource and the wealth of the land, but also as a heritage to be protected, obtaining information on the issues involved in its administration and on the best possible management of this resource.

Both brands worked on one of the oldest pumping stations, the station at Via Cenisio 39, which began operation in 1906, designed by engineer Franco Minorini. The client, the company MM, wanted to open the station to the public, transforming it into an experimental place to find out more about the public water supply and the quality of the water that comes into the houses of Milan. The three states of water, solid, liquid and gas, become graphic shapes and patterns representing different aspects of the new station: Architecture, Aqueduct and Digital, governing its colour palette.

The visitor experience takes place in five areas, one after the other, in an immersive exhibition that can be tailored depending on the different types of visitors. There’s a primary reception area, a transition between the solid and liquid dimension; an area that’s the beating heart of the old system; a library; a central all, with 3D guides; a multi-purpose space for hosting a variety of different types of event, in addition to exhibitions and temporary installations and, finally, the gaseous and therefore “digital” dimension of water is represent by a multimedia area.