Pirelli HangarBicocca’s enormous galleries retain the scale of the former Breda locomotive factory. The industrial architecture now hosts contemporary art, allowing exhibitions to respond to a neighborhood once shaped by factories and later transformed through redevelopment.
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The immense interior gives artworks room to feel almost architectural in their own right. This was a factory before it became an exhibition space: Breda built railway carriages, locomotives, and machinery in the Bicocca district, one of Italy’s major industrial areas. The current Hangar includes buildings from different phases, including a transformer hall completed in the 1960s.
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UpgradeQuick facts
- The site was part of the Breda industrial complex in Bicocca.
- The Navate building was constructed between 1963 and 1965 for transformer production.
- Pirelli HangarBicocca opened as an exhibition space in 2004.
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