Steps in the transformation process

Although the first Milan Trade Fair (Campionaria) was held at the Bastioni di Porta Venezia in April 1920 using temporary wood structures, the foundations of the first building in the Sempione area to the north of Milan were laid in 1923. It took just 150 days to build the Palazzo dello Sport, based on a project by architect Paolo Vietti Violi who also signed the twin Palazzine Orafi that now host the headquarters of Fondazione Fiera Milano. A great deal of work was then done to consolidate and expand the area of the city that had been assigned to Fiera which, at the end of the 1990’s, with the construction of the “Portello rib” (on part of the area that had been abandoned by the Alfa Romeo buildings) occupied 440,000 sq.m.

Back in the 1980’s, there was already talk of relocating the exhibition grounds outside the urban area. Various options to the south and north of Milan were considered, until the signing of a Framework Agreement between the Lombardy Regional Government and the Milan City Council in 1994 identified an area between Rho and Pero that had once housed an Agip oil refinery, as the site for the construction of the new complex. With the transfer of authority from the central to the regional government in these matters in 1998, work on the project finally got underway: in 2000, the Ente Autonomo Internazionale Fiera Milano became a Foundation and the Framework Agreement under the Lombardy Regional Government became the instrument for establishing the interests of the various parties involved, from the reclamation of the area to the road links.

Fondazione, in turn, established a company for this purpose - Sviluppo Sistema Fiera – to oversee the contracts and design phases and to prepare a self-funding plan (by selling part of the original exhibition grounds in Milan) and obtained credit in order to be fully independent and responsible for the investment, without using public resources.

The first stone of the new exhibition complex was laid on 6 October 2002. The structure was inaugurated 30 months later on 31 March 2005 and hosted the first exhibition. Meanwhile, the winning project for the purchase and redevelopment of a part of the urban exhibition grounds was selected in 2004.

Work began on a growing number of projects to complete the large-scale complex in Rho:  in 2006, the hotels facing the southern entrance (Porta Sud), in 2007, the green spaces around the complex, in 2008, the Fiera Milano offices and the eastern entrance (Porta Est). In 2008 a project was also submitted to transform Pavilions 5 and 6 at Portello and to link these with the MIC and build the largest congress center in Europe. The hotels have already opened to guests and construction work on the offices and transformation of Portello has begun.

The exhibition grounds signed by Massimiliano Fuksas, the multi-level car parks by Mario Bellini, the hotels by Dominique Perrault, the public green spaces by Andreas Kipar, and the offices by the 5+1AA practice have thus transformed an abandoned and degraded post-industrial site on the outskirts of Milan into a veritable “architectural park” capable of driving major economic and social development.