Palazzo Lombardia is Best Tall Building Europe 2012

An Italian building has won the Best Tall Building Europe 2012 award: Caputo partnership with Pei Cobb Freed & Partners Architects LLP and Sistema Duemila's new Regione Lombardia Government building.

Palazzo Lombardia, the winner of a design competition in 2004, is a large public building complex that covers an area of 30,000 square meters consisting of curved buildings with 9 floors and a central tower of 39 floors, 161.30 meters high, inspired by the principles of quality, beauty, accessibility and saving, fully integrated into the urban fabric - so as to constitute a "piece of renewed city."

“The zenith image of the sinuous blending and distancing of the ridges of the Lombardy mountains which determines the ever-changing 'empty space' of the valleys has been the morphogenetic matrix of the project. An organic sign established in the culture and collective memory, which is also that of the rivers that open the way towards the plain, is 'paradoxically' at the base of the design of a building in the 'shape of a city': the new Regione Lombardia government building, made up of ridge-shaped buildings and square in the place of valleys.”

The other winning buildings were:

- MAD architects' Absolute Towers - Marilyn Monroe Penthouses in Mississauga (Canada) - Best Tall Building Americas;

- Ingenhoven Architects' 1 Bligh Street in Sydney - Best Tall Building Asia & Australasia;

- Ateliers Jean Nouvel's Doha Tower (Qatar) - Best Tall Building Middle East & Africa.