Teatro Armani, Milan

The liaison between fashion and architecture seems to have become one of the most fertile fields of international critical debate, despite the disconcertment of a number of critics, including future Venice Biennial director Deyan Sudjic, who holds that "fashion is not art... but the perfect cultural expression of the limited attention span of our age"

And so, aware of the explosive impact of a space designed by a great architecture on potential customers - thanks in part to the insistent voices of the mass media - the most advanced and cultivated fashion designers are increasingly turning to big names on the international architectural scene: to cite only the most obvious example, Prada managed to get Rem Koolhas, Herzog & De Meuron and Sejima all simultaneously involved in a sort of "overall" revision of its image.
It is in this atmosphere, in which Sudjic notes that "never before has fashion worked so hard to suggest that it might be an art", that Giorgio Armani opens his new headquarters in Milan.

With highly sophisticated, cool reasoning, the stylist chose to leave his famous Teatrino in Via Borgonuovo 21 for the more metropolitan, minimal aesthetic of an old industrial factory, Nestlé at Via Borgognone 59, and entrust its renovation to one of the brightest stars in the international architectural firmament, Tadao Ando.
After all, the famous Japanese architect is no newcomer to this controversial but highly profitable liaison with the world of fashion: for he recently produced the Benetton Fabrica, a complex subterranean structure surrounded by the gardens of a splendid Venetian villa. 
The Nestlè area will soon find itself in a strategic position, as the nearby Ansaldo factory is being renovated byDavid Chipperfield to create a fully-fledged "city of culture", soon to house a number of major city museum institutions (the new archaeological museum, an extra-European cultural centre, a centre for the study of the visual arts, a school of film and a marionette workshop).
The old industrial zone of Porta Genova also houses the new warehouses and the school of Teatro alla Scala, as well as a number of other ateliers and sets.
The architecture of the Teatro Armani seems to aim for the utmost simplicity and versatility.
Ando, who has created not only a "theatre" for fashion shows and events, but offices and a showroom as well, prefers the severe modernity of reinforced concrete left exposed to interact with the existing structures in the least invasive way possible, bestowing on the new space a monumentality born not out of use of noble materials but out of the harmony of its proportions.

A solemn promenade fully 100 metres long, interposed with slender square pillars in its centre with added emphasis created by a slight inclination - which Sudjic ironically refers to as the "triumphal way" - leads the visitor/spectator into the foyer (460 m2), characterised by a graceful oblique curved wall: but as no structural element goes all the way to the ceiling, the space is defined by detached planes which appear to be separated from one another by beams of light.
The effect adds levity to the rather severe whole, also lightening up the monochrome effect of the cement: the work seems a homage to the sober, austere hues of grey, which along with beige is one of Armani's favourite colours, emphasised by the use of pietra serena in the flooring.
The washrooms and cloak room are concealed by the curved wall of the foyer.
Duly "psyched-up" for the fashion show event, the visitor leaves the foyer for the theatre proper, which is actually a flexible space intended to house not only the luminous catwalk and 11 rows of seats (seating a total of 682) but also conferences, meetings and art exhibitions. 
Next to it, a 450 m2 dining room facing onto one of Ando's beloved pools of water measuring fully 250 m2, seen as if framed through low windows. The dining room is furnished with very long benches and tables to seat up to 500 guests, or rectangular tables for intimate dinners for 250.
The room is lit up by a central skylight, while the vaulted ceiling creates evocative shading of colour and light.

The fascinating renovation project in an area totalling 3400 m2, which Sudjic compares to a nineteenth-century opera house for its worldly, spectacular facies, is the outcome of the stylist's and the architect's mutual esteem, for the two see particular affinities in their approach to their work. 
Thus, while Armani says "I wanted to create something as simple as possible, but valuable enough to last, and have always loved and admired the spirit of Japanese buildings", Ando comments: "I hope that the new theatre represents and stimulates new thoughts and expressions in various fields of the arts, just like the clothes - certainly the simplest form of self-expression - which inspire the theatre. Just as the new architecture, in the context of the existing building, will add new life to the old structure of the factory, I hope that the new headquarters and the theatre will bring new hope and new energy to the great, creative city that is Milan."

The minimalist and metropolitan former Nestlè factory is now the elegant stage for events, fashion shows and performances. Giorgio Armani wished to entrust the construction of the 3400 square metres of the theatre to the Japanese architect Tadao Ando, renowned for his taste for simplicity and purity in design.
Cement, water and light are the elements that characterise the project: a 100 metre pathway interspersed with slender square pillars leads the audience into the 460m2 foyer.
In the theatre itself - a space flexible enough to accommodate fashion shows, exhibitions and operettas - light comes from a central skylight and, together with the vaulted ceiling, creates striking gradated colour effects.