Procopio talks about "GRIFONE"

Nowadays, when architets work on similar projects they have access to and are able to develop uncommon professional experience..

The idea behind GRIFONE CLUB MILANO came about few years back when I was commissioned a multi-sports facility heavily centred around horseback riding, a projectits creators belived very much in and which is the fruit of their relentless determination.

I was hightly motivated from the very beginning because I saw it as a great, and new for me, professional challenge.

I understood that this project, with its new and complex language, whould forever change my approach to architecture.

Projects and buildings had to be created, developed and positioned not only in the environmental consciousness, but also had to fit the exixting landscape.

They shouldn't not intrude in the landscape and had to re-qualify long neglected areas.

For these reasons, all the buildings and structures of sports-centre Grifone are the perfect match of nature friendliness and industrial means.

The Centre was born to answer specific, finalised and programmed needs.

A Club for people who love both outdoors than indoors, who love sports and their free time in its various form.

A centre which aims at bringing about richer values in people lives.

We created such environment with the most natural, simple and traditional techniques, such as bricks, wood, iron, shingles - all elements born with man and his culture of the environment- to formulate spontaneous shapes and aesthetic ideas.

The Sport-centre buildings and the stables have been designed as organic solutions to specific functions, the only reason for their being.

The buildings contain ideas harmony in their shape and its development, as harmony which integrates them and positions them seamlessy in the environment, a 500.000 square metres surface splated to house a multi-sport facility which will include hotels, restaurant, a shopping centre, an exhibit hall and housing for the staff.

The buildings features roofs which afford a great deal of shade, a solution we adopted not only for protection from the sun, but also from humidity, which freezes and than thaws on the wall.

Orizontal lines are Grifone lines.

We should bear in mind that GRIFONE CLUB MILANO is located in the Lombardy country-side, where any vertical excess would stand out in an unpleasant way.

For this reason we eliminated all vertical developments we deemed not necessary and strove to tie the facility as much as possible with the environment employing materials native to the area.