Milan. New judicial tile for the Italian Archi-star Stefano Boeri. The Milan prosecutor’s office asked for its house arrest as part of an investigation into the affair of the call for tenders for the design of the future European information and culture library (Beic) in Milan (see Ill. ).
“I am surprised and very upset, reacted Stefano Boeri. I confidently await the meeting with the judge of preliminary investigations to finally clarify my position. »» It took place on February 4. A preliminary interrogation which also concerns two other architects including Cino Paolo Zucchi. They are suspected of corruption and abuse of power as commissioners of the local competition organized in 2022 for the Beic site. The project dates back to the late 1990s and accused serious delays due to the surface concerned (86,000 square meters initially) and the cost of estimated costs (between 227 and 260 million euros today against 152 million euros planned). It is relaunched in 2022 to rehabilitate the 30,000 m² zone which covers the old sorting station in Porta Vittoria by benefiting from the financing of the European post-Cavid recovery plan up to more than 100 million euros. The work should be completed in 2026 to build two huge glass “greenhouses” which will house 25 million books.
According to the judge in charge of the investigation, Stefano Boeri was fed up by failing to declare “Potential conflict positions” and “Incompatibility situations” with regard to the participants. The name of the 68 -year -old architect, director of the Studio Stefano Boeri Architetti, who has offices in Milan, Shanghai and Tirana (Albania), now appears especially in the judicial chronicles of the Italian press. He is accused by the justice of “abusive subdivision” and illegal construction for the project he signed and called “bosconavigli”. A project of 9 luxury apartments spread over 12 floors which should see the light of day in the historic district of San Cristoforo, southwest of Milan. Many irregularities have emerged: from the absence of the necessary “execution plan” to open the site to the height of the tower which reaches 41 m, exceeding the limit of 25 m which allows to do without the execution plan. The project has not finally been the subject of a deliberation of the Milan municipal council but of a simple agreement before a notary between the private promoter and a municipal official.
An end of career enamelled with scandals for the former president of the Triennale de Milan. He taught urban design at the Polytechnic School in the Lombard capital and was from 2011 to 2013 municipal councilor for culture. But it is above all his urban renewal project of the Milanese district of Porta Nuova called “Bosco Vertical” which provided him an international notoriety in 2014. More than 20,000 plants and trees, the equivalent of two hectares of forest, had been installed on two tours high of 76 and 112 m. A “vertical forest” which has been emulated with dozens of similar projects imagined in the world of Switzerland in China and Brazil to Albania.
View of the project of the project for the Beic de Porta Vittoria.
© Fondazione Beic
