New Trade Fair

The New Trade Fair is not only a big project for the Milan region - its dimensions make it one of the biggest buildings in Europe. Massimiliano Fuksas conceived the site on the outskirts of the city as a new landscape with its own geography. The project is structured by a central axis that connects the service centres, offices and the exhibition halls. The whole complex is covered by a vast roof - an undulating lightweight structure, with a surface area exceeding 46.000 square metres, over 1300 metres long and approximately 32 metres wide. Made up of a reticular rhomboidal mesh structure in prefinished steel profiles, it is connected via spherical nodes and covered with laminated glass attached via plates to the profiles below. It is supported by 183 steel columns 500 mm. in diameter which branch into smaller supporting arms above 12 metres. Fuksas derived the form from constant altimetric variations as found in the natural landscape in the form of 'craters', 'waves' and 'dunes'.