International design and innovation office CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati has won the “Reinventing Cities” competition organized by the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group with a project for a new office building and center for scientific research in Milan, Italy. The design by CRA features a 200-meter-long (650 feet) urban vineyard that covers the entire building, creating a publicly-accessible footpath that ascends from the street level to the rooftop.
Construction will kick off in late 2019. VITAE has won the competition to reinvent a vacant, post-industrial lot in via Serio, a street in south Milan located a few hundred meters from the Fondazione Prada contemporary art museum. The complex includes a brand-new piazza, adding up to a total of more than 5000 square meters of public space given back to one of the city’s most vibrant neighborhoods.
Image © CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati
Inspired by the principles of biophilic design, the project takes its name from VITAE, a word whose meaning is “life” in Latin and “vine” in Italian. A green path with a vine-covered pergola gently rises along the walls of the building, creating a long promenade for pedestrians. The people who stroll through this green spiral can pass close to a series of terraces and greenhouses for urban farming and hydroponic cultivation.
The VITAE building will host a farm-to-table restaurant on the ground level, high-tech offices above, and a series of facilities for the leading molecular and oncology research center ICOM, including terraced guest rooms for its international researchers, on the higher floors. This array of functions seeks to create a harmony between nature and science, public and private life, like a reinterpretation of the social and spatial model of the Charterhouses, such as Milan’s Abbazia di Chiaravalle, located just a few kilometers away from the site of VITAE. Source by CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati.
Image © CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati
- Location: Milan, Italy
- Architect: Carlo Ratti Associati
- Project Team: Carlo Ratti, Giovanni de Niederhausern, Saverio Panata (project manager), Valentina Grasso (project leader), Anna Morani, Matteo Zerbi, Giovanni Trogu, Ina Sefgjini, Nicola Scaramuzza, Alberto Benetti, Oliver Kazimir, Francesca Marino, Greta Stefanova
- Team Lead: Covivio Development
- Environmental Expert: Habitech
- Collaboration: Fondazione Politecnico di Milano
- Technical consultants: Tekser, Milano Engineering, Studio Idrogeotecnico, Studio di Ingegneria Rigone, DSB Landscape Design, FSC Engineering Srl
- Year: 2019
- Renderings by CRA Graphic team: Gary di Silvio, Pasquale Milieri, Gianluca Zimbardi, Courtesy of CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati
Image © CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati 
Image © CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati Image © CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati Image © CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati