B&B Italia’s new research and development centre occupies an area of roughly 3,500 sq.m. in the factory designed by Tobia Scarpa, built over two periods in the 1970s. The mission to complete the new building significantly reduced the design. A rough concrete wall was used to join the two existing alignments in the new corner that were left well-visible by the Novedratese road due to the out-of-synch position of the offices, one of the first projects by Renzo Piano.
Behind the wall the section has three floors: a six-foot high underground floor storing the presses for the polyurethane drums, the ground floor occupied by the prototyping laboratories, the first floor with the internal showroom and the planning and design offices. The eleven-meter high photographic studio is located on the south side taking in the underground floor and the first floor. This is where the advertising images are prepared and produced.
The first two floors of the building are made from prefabricated concrete elements. The lighter and more transparent section dedicated to the showroom and the offices are made from a metallic structure with a slightly regressing perimeter in respect to the outer concrete wall. This produces a closed terrace on the south side and leaves the semi-transparent volume to appear on the building’s profile, covered in polycarbonate panels that hold the significant height of the trusses.
All the functions covered by CRS’s activities are grouped together in this 10,000 sq.m. area including the product’s planning process and engineering, the advertising, the displaying and sales techniques, training of the sales staff inside the distribution network. This project completes the restructuring and expansion process of the B&B centre, with a redesigning of the entrance with the porter’s lodge and the railing, the new garden project and the complete redesigning of the offices in their internal distribution.

Total surface sqm 7600