TYPE: • Industry
• Industrial laboratory CURRENT USE: • Technological Park HISTORICAL USE: • Technological Park LEGAL STATUS: • Private and public association PLAN AND CONSTRUCTION 1993 - 1995• Aldo Rossi |
The Lake Maggiore Tecnoparco is among the first ever technological estates in Northern Italy, financed by the European Union and the Piedmont Region; it was set up with the aim of encouraging entrepreneurial growth, linking the network of small and medium sized enterprises with the most sophisticated scientific and technological know-how. The choice of such a well-known designer, which Aldo Rossi definitely was at the time, marks the desire to invest on a strong image, for a type of industrial settlement consolidated in other sectors, but new in this context. 
The estate currently houses over 20 enterprises and research bodies.
Mr. Rossi structured the plant on a grid, symmetrically and with a very strong solemn connotation of the whole, almost like a Cathedral, or a Sacred Way to innovation. The service centre, the main building in the complex, is treated like a public building, the visual fulcrum of the estate, at the end of the central avenue. It consists of two wings distributed around a central tower and hall, with the function of distribution to the offices (toilets on the ground floor and offices on the upper floors).
The main façade is covered in white granite from Montorfano (a local stone), and the building’s structural section is emphasised on the façade also by an “overlaid order” of painted iron portals, like a sort of construction decoration. The extensive use of prefabricated grey cement panels, with brightly coloured windows inserted in them distinguishes the entire settlement. The entrance path is characterised by the façades of the pavilions for laboratories and by the large 15 metre tall cement pillars connected at the top by a painted steel reticular beam.
Modern architecture in the surrounding areas: In the industrial area around Fondo Toce lies the “Thermoselect” experimental waste treatment plant, designed by Mario Botta and built in 1991. Disused once and for all in 1999 after years of debate, the plant is awaiting probable demolition or reuse.
Useful information: Telephone: 0323 586 898 E-mail: tecnoparco@tecnoparco.it Web site: http://www.tecnoparco.it
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