Snam, the future headquarters with the roof garden as a central square

he beating heart will not be the command bridge on the upper floors, but the green terrace in the centre - with a restaurant and meeting area - that ideally interrupts the vertical sky-ground lines to construct a 'piazza' that connects all levels of the building.
Eighty years after its foundation, Snam will move its historic headquarters from San Donato Milanese (now distributed in different locations) to Milan, in the Porta Romana area, in the fourth quarter of 2025, to house approximately 1,400 employees in the area known as Symbiosis, the district developed by Covivio, which aims at sustainable urban regeneration with zero local emissions and energy produced mainly from renewable sources. A significant investment, for the company, in excess of 100 million euro, of which Snam will retain both ownership and management.

"The new building," explained Fabrizio Rutschmann, Snam's chief people and corporate service officer, "is an environment characterised by light, space and transparency, capable of favouring and facilitating integration and networking, through a 'multiplicity' of places where people can meet and work. The new building will become the company's headquarter, flanking the historic San Donato Milanese facility, which will establish itself as Snam's technological hub and where Dispatching and some other services will continue to operate".

Il terrazzo-giardino

The building - which Il Sole 24Ore was able to visit for the first time - has a total surface area of about 19,000 square metres, and consists of three overlapping and misaligned volumes on 14 floors (two are the basement floors housing the technical rooms and the garage).

1,400 employees of the group will be accommodated in the new building and will be able to occupy the 980 workstations in rotation. The building (ground floor + 13) is 65 metres high and vertical mobility will be made efficient by the six super-fast lifts. Common areas include a 200-seat auditorium and a 300-seat company restaurant on the seventh floor with a view over much of the city. The building is completed by two basement floors with approximately 350 parking spaces and technical rooms. Brightness will be a central element of the new headquarters and thanks to more than 10,000 square metres of glass windows there will be considerable energy savings, supported by a photovoltaic system on the roof with a power of 60 KWp. Savings in running costs will also be guaranteed, largely due to the optimisation of the air conditioning and insulation systems..

"One is accustomed to thinking of a building as a place where the higher you go, the more important spaces and people you find," explained Gino Garbellini, architect and one of the founders of the Piuarch studio, which designed it, "but the new Snam building is not like that: it looks at its centre, that is where the relationships between people are".
Crossing the foyer, on the right, you will find the Auditorium, conceived to be a dynamic space, which transforms itself according to the different needs of use..