In the dynamic 30 years since the founding of Progetto CMR Massimo Roj Architects in Milan, celebrated this year, a true constellation of design firms has formed around Progetto CMR International, the holding company currently leading an international group employing about 300 professionals. It includes and coordinates, in addition to various business units of Progetto CMR in Italy and Asia, companies such as Sportium, Progetto Design&Build, Dontstop architettura, Future Business Net, Bim Factory, Progetto DVA, Agevola 360, Blue Factory, and EnergySave, each specialized in a specific area of architectural and engineering design, accustomed to operating individually or in collaboration. The goal, as Massimo Roj explains in this conversation, is on one hand an integrated design and operational approach offered to many public and private clients, and on the other, a continuous desire to understand contemporaneity and anticipate change. First and foremost, in people’s lifestyles, which remain at the heart of the practice of architecture and urban design, and consequently in ways of social and economic feasibility of designing and constructing, in real estate investments, and in medium- to long-term vision. With the firm belief that the principles of multifunctionality and polycentrism are inherent in the vision of the future and the necessary direction.
The Sign, design Progetto CMR
The Sign, design Progetto CMR
Considering the relationship between sustainability and the forecast of a declining population in the coming decades, how do you see the transformation of the housing stock in Italy?
Given that I have always been of the idea to demolish the old and preserve what has historical value, the issue of housing is currently quite complex.
If it is not worthwhile to keep factories as memories of industrial development with absurd consumption for misfit volumes, the same goes for the social housing in large cities built immediately after the wars, which certainly should be demolished and rebuilt with significantly higher quality, more advanced technologies, and much more limited consumption. Furthermore, the land could be freed, instead of 4-5 floors without elevators there could be 8 floors, thus halving the surface occupied on the ground which could be dedicated to community services.
The Sign, design Progetto CMR
The Sign, design Progetto CMR
As in the project Regenerate the City with the study for San Siro.
Yes, the goal was to review and rethink urban areas, bringing inhabitants to reuse the territory with an increase in green spaces and services in view of a possible elevation in height. A response also to the future demographic decline and the need to design for people and reuse spaces, which is often forgotten amidst political battles and egocentrism.
Unfortunately, we still face outdated urban planning tools, dating back to the mid-20th century (1942), almost a hundred years in which everything has changed. There have been 5-6 bills but not a true adaptation of the regulations and this hinders evolution. Milan followed a regional law and local regulations that serve to speed up the procedure. As of today, there could be 7 areas with social housing located in the nerve centers of Milan, already well connected by public transport, which can have an increase in building square meters.
How might the transformation of the Italian outskirts be?
We are for the polycentric city, we want to eliminate the suburbs to make them new urban centers equipped with all services—housing, work, transport, schools, commerce, health—and well connected to each other. The model of the single-function city of the 1950s, which concentrated everything in different distant areas forcing residents into continuous travel, is outdated.
Nuova Sede Dipartimento di Area Medica dell’Università di Udine, design Progetto CMR
Nuova Sede Dipartimento di Area Medica dell’Università di Udine, design Progetto CMR
Today’s cities must be designed with neighborhoods that become self-sufficient urban districts, no longer elements of a radial city, but of a polycentrism that can also spread beyond the urban area, including in a wider metropolitan city and conurbation, for example in the triangle between Milan, Turin, and Genoa with urban centers of intermediate size.
The transformation of workplaces, however, has been underway for some years. You have realized, for instance, the idea of a proactive office.
It’s a research, called UP150, that Progetto Design & Build, a company of the Progetto CMR International Group, has been carrying out for almost 3 years with the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences for Health of the University of Milan analyzing and monitoring the performance of people in the workplace. According to what the WHO defines to combat sedentary lifestyle, the most widespread disease in the world, about 150 minutes of physical activity per week is needed. In our offices, we have equipment connected to an app activated by a QR code that facilitates physical activity, like a stationary bike to sit on during a call, a stepper for drying hands or getting drinking water, or taking the stairs. At the end of the week, there is an evaluation of how much physical activity has been carried out and how much needs to be recovered to reach 40% cardio, 30% muscular, 30% joint. It is not, of course, sports activity. Besides our offices, the system has been implemented in those curated for BIP by Progetto Design & Build in the Torre Liberty in Milan’s historic center, and three other companies have requested the system. It is the office that is changing. In the book “Workspace/Workscape. The new office scenarios“, which we published in 2000, we hypothesized remote work that could reach 7-8%.
Harmonic Innovation Hub by Entopan, design Progetto CMR
Harmonic Innovation Hub by Entopan, design Progetto CMR
COVID made us understand that we can work differently, anywhere thanks to technology. Today the thought has advanced a long way from the reflections imposed by the pandemic, which is why updating the opus facere, the provision of a service not always connected to a fixed location, is useful.
At Progetto CMR, we coined the motto “from Working Space to Living Place” to define the workplace that transforms into a living place, strengthened also by the conviction, for instance, that office buildings, to meet the demands emerging from our ever-evolving society, should take the path of multifunctionality to extend their life cycle so as not to be exhausted in the canonical eight working hours.
Harmonic Innovation Hub by Entopan, design Progetto CMR
Such as in the project for Entopan, Harmonic Innovation Hub?
In the heart of the Mediterranean, in Tiriolo, Catanzaro, we are converting a large former Telecom building, about 40,000 square meters, then abandoned, into a sort of digital village where besides offices, a start-up incubator, coworking spaces, there are wellness spaces, a gym, a nursery, two restaurants, bars, and residence for researchers, a place for prayer, a library, and outdoor and terrace work areas. A place for living, not just pure work. It is H-shaped with the same proportions as a Temple of Harmony, we wanted to bring ‘harmony’ to the area, thanks to the forward-looking client.
Harmonic Innovation Hub by Entopan, design Progetto CMR
Multifunctionality can also apply to a facade, such as Cellia Interactive Cell in collaboration with Focchi, which won the 2024 Compasso d’Oro.
A research begun in 2006 for the Garibaldi Towers is now a patent. The idea started with an interactive facade made of cells, to which we have added over time all the building functions: climatic hot/cold, technological with the distribution of wiring from outside to inside, ventilation with input/output, screening function with horizontal and vertical elements, photovoltaic for energy production and daytime and nighttime external lighting. The facade becomes a proactive machine. Everything is made off-site and assembled with an external mobile arm without scaffolding, usable for new buildings but also in the renovation of existing buildings, which for office buildings means being able to work without people leaving the building, thus without loss of profit.
