Lodi, Bipielle Centre

Close to the railway station, a few paces from the city centre, in the area occupied by the old Polenghi Lombarda, stands the architectural complex built by the architect Renzo Piano: the new headquarters of the Banca Popolare of Lodi. The BPL Centre was designed to fit into the city of Lodi, both from the point of view of city planning, with its ideal connection between the lines of the railway station and the historic inner part of the city, and thus creating a structural and functional connection, both from the point of view of colour, in the use of tiles for its covering, which recalls the historic appearance of the terracotta of churches, fortified walls and farms, with a marked effect of unification.
The scheme of its construction is a rectangle of about 250 metres in length which is traced by the whole of the western side; some cylindrical structures surround the central “piazza”, conceived as a modern public agora, which is covered over with an attractive glassed over structure suspended more than eight metres over the ground and made up of many sheets of screen-printed glass; it is supported by a system of steel cables arranged to radiate outwards from a central fulcrum made up of the Auditorium, and by steel girders. From the “piazza” we may admire the fountain called the “flower of water” designed by the Japanese artist Susumu Shingu.
Worthy of note, finally, is the Auditorium, a hall for music seating 800, where the materials used are remarkable: from the tiles for the cladding panels of the walls to the cherry wood of the benches arranged radially around the central stage.