Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

During 2022 the international competition for the design of the work, already financed under the PNRR

Milan, 30 December 2021 – The guidelines for the construction of the new European Information and Culture Library (BEIC) have been approved by the Municipal Council, whose intervention is foreseen as part of the "Strategic investment plan on cultural heritage sites, buildings and natural areas" complementary to the Plan national recovery and resilience (PNRR).
Now the Municipality of Milan and the BEIC Foundation will have to sign the specifications with the MIC, the Ministry of Culture, which regulates the commitments between all the subjects involved.

A memorandum of understanding will then be signed between the Municipality of Milan and the BEIC Foundation to regulate their respective tasks and responsibilities in the process of creating the BEIC, which will commit the implementing entities to sharing the governance of the project in every phase and to ensuring its scientific direction. joint.

The main contours of the BEIC have also been defined, the original project of which, winner of the 2001 competition and reaching the executive phase in 2008, was not implemented due to lack of the necessary ministerial funding, calculated at the time at 206 million euros.
The Municipality will launch the competition process for a new design of the library during 2022, taking as a point of reference the report drawn up by the technical working group established in March 2021, which revisited its functions in a contemporary key and establishes, as an element of new compared to the previous project, that the BEIC will take over the functions currently carried out by Sormani as the Central Library of the Milanese network system.

The adoption of the new concept developed by the working group had to take into account many different technical and cultural aspects: from the evolution of Italian legislation on anti-seismic, fire-fighting, energy and environmental sustainability to the priority need to contain the consumption of land, construction and management costs of the library; finally, of the centrality of digital culture and the new meaning that information and culture have taken on in the last two decades, drivers of the crisis of the paradigm of possession as a prerequisite for cultural enjoyment in favor of a more "horizontal" access to knowledge, which occurs today in dynamic and fast way thanks to digital technologies, all you need is a smartphone and the network.

"The new BEIC project – declares the councilor for Culture Tommaso Sacchi – confirms the cultural assumptions that were at the basis of the original idea: a library-world which, thanks to the presence of important collections, in physical and digital format, is able to document the history, culture, socio-economic reality and languages ​​of the European continent, strengthening especially in young people the habit of comparing the different cultures that inhabit it, transforming it into a laboratory of knowledge with infinite possibilities for growth and transformation, thanks also to increasingly accessible information".

"A new cultural center in the eastern part of Milan, already at the center of recent urban regeneration projects such as that of the former slaughterhouse area – adds the urban regeneration councilor Giancarlo Tancredi – in line with the city's renewal process public that has been in place for some time and which we are increasingly strengthening. The location is confirmed within the urban plan of Porta Vittoria, but with greater attention to landscape and environmental inclusion thanks also to a downsizing linked to the communication methods that have established themselves lately".

The new project will occupy 36 thousand square meters compared to the over 80.000 of the original one, and the economic impact is reduced to 101,574 million already foreseen in the state budget as part of the PNRR. The financing, arranged by Decree of the President of the Council of Ministers on 8 October 2021, may be integrated with additional public or private resources.

The urban location of the BEIC identified in 2001 in the area of ​​the former Porta Vittoria station is confirmed as semi-central, barycentric with respect to the main university buildings, located on the "Porta Vittoria" stop of the railway link, close to the next Dateo stop of the new line M4 metro which will connect the city center with Linate airport, and therefore connected with the regional metro and railway lines.