S-Tiles - Centro BPL, Lodi

	[BANCA POPOLARE DI LODI]
	Name: Centro Polifunzionale BPL		Design: Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Genova
	Destination of use: head office and auditorium		Manufacturer: Il Palagio
	City: Lodi (MI)		Ceramic Materials: frost resistant terracotta
	Country: Italia
	Type of intervention: ventilated wall
	Costumers: Banca Popolare di Lodi
	Year of completion: 1992 - 2000
	The Project
	In the early nineties the Banca Popolare di Lodi (BPL) – one of the most important credit institutions of northern Italy – assigned the project of restructuring their head quarters to Renzo Piano. The customers did not have a fixed idea of a traditional bank building from the construction so they allowed the Genovese architect a certain amount of flexibility in the project, who in turn, chose to restructure a vast area of transit between a train station and the city centre and in this way pleased the city dwellers by, in a sense, giving it back to the populace. The fortunate meeting of such illuminated entrepreneurs and one of the best architects in the area of sustainability gave life to a polyfunctional centre surrounded by greenery and trees. The site of the Polyfunctional Centre BPL is an ex dairy establishment: the new architectonic complex therefore is born from a pre-existing fabrication, and confirms a principle that is important to Renzo Piano himself, that architecture in order to be sustainable, must be regenerative or, in the architect’s own words, must constitute an ‘implosion’.