Jérôme Michelangeli from Michelangeli Design together with Studio Carrera has designed HELIX—a green and light-filled addition to the regeneration of the Santa Giulia area in preparations for the 2026 Olympics.
For its innovative and environmental design, HELIX has recently been awarded a 2022 International Architecture Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
The new district of Milan that originated from an urban redevelopment project in the south-east of the city is conceived by Foster & Partners as a new area where various facilities would integrate, connect, and create synergies, reconstructing the urban fabric that will play a key role in the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympic Games.
This area will host the multifunctional, 15,000-seat Arena Pala Italia as the primary Ice hockey venue for the 2026 Olympics.
The Project is the result of a rational, simple reflection: to offer the inhabitant the same surface of the terrace as the inhabited surface.
For this, the slabs project themselves and stretch freely toward the street, like oversized balconies.
The counterpart of this choice is the possible loss of daylight, which is why the auxiliary structure that supports the cantilever generates shafts of light inhabited by the vegetation that passes from one level to another in a random manner.
It is in the superposition of concepts and simple ideas that the richness of the project is generated, its environmental complexity, as a vertical ecosystem.
Project: HELIX
Architects: Michelangeli Design
Lead Architect: Jérôme Michelangeli
Associate Architects: Studio Carrera
General Contractor: Makinen Suisse SA
Client: LS Immobiliare srl.
Photographs Courtesy of the Architects
