After a three-year restoration, Torre Velasca, Milan’s iconic skyscraper, reopens to the public with a fresh identity that amplifies its brutalist-modernist legacy. First completed in 1958 by the avant-garde collective BBPR (Banfi, Belgiojoso, Peressutti, and Rogers), the concrete tower has long stood as a symbol of postwar Italian resilience and experimentation. Now, under the direction of Hines, with Asti Architetti leading the architectural refurbishment, Torre Velasca enters a new phase as a hybrid vertical complex that combines residential, corporate, cultural, and communal uses, anchored by a newly created urban piazza.

all images ©Albo

Hines and Asti Architetti restore Torre Velasca

The defining form of the tower, composed of a rational base rising into a dramatic overhanging crown supported by angled buttresses, is preserved in its entirety. Often likened to a medieval fortress or Lombard tower, its bold silhouette remains unchanged, but its skin and systems are carefully upgraded. The original clinker brick facade, one of the most distinctive features of the building, was subjected to extensive restoration, led by Milan-based Asti Architetti for global real estate firm Hines, using laser cleaning and manual repair techniques to preserve its original grain and irregularities. Windows, some of which had been replaced with incompatible frames in the decades since its construction, were returned to BBPR’s specifications, reintroducing uniformity and rhythm to the grid.

The restoration also involves an overhaul of the building’s technological core—HVAC, energy efficiency systems, acoustic insulation, and digital infrastructure—earning the project LEED Gold and WiredScore Gold certifications. ‘The restoration had to be invisible,’ explains Paolo Asti. ‘Every intervention had to match the design logic and constructive intelligence of BBPR, or it didn’t belong.’

after a three-year restoration, Torre Velasca reopens to the public

reimagining BBPR’s skyscraper as a civic platform

Spanning 34,000 square meters of mixed-use program across 29 floors, what was once a gated skyscraper now opens fully to the public. The base now includes flexible event spaces, an exhibition gallery, retail units, and informal lounges. The 75-meter-high tower, once seen as a fortress, now functions as a civic platform. ‘This isn’t just a real estate project. It’s a return of public dignity to a building that was always meant to be part of the city, not apart from it,’ notes Senior Managing Director of Hines Mario Abbadessa.

Internally, public and private programs are layered vertically in a manner that respects the original tripartite structure: a commercial and communal ground plane, a modernist office block midsection, and a residential crown above—now reimagined as the METT Hotel & Lifestyle residences. The 18th floor houses MIA, a new panoramic restaurant designed with restrained luxury, while the mezzanine floors accommodate SUSHISAMBA and other food and wellness amenities. The interiors feature bespoke terrazzo, restored wood paneling, original signage typography, and hand-finished ceramics in an effort to echo the material intelligence of BBPR’s original scheme.

Perhaps the most radical gesture is at street level, where the formerly vehicle-dominated area around the tower has been entirely re-landscaped as Piazza Velasca, a pedestrian piazza paved in natural stone and planted with magnolias, olive trees, and native grasses. Asti Architetti’s custom benches and Esa Engineering’s lighting reinterpret BBPR’s design language in a contemporary idiom. The original street lamps designed by BBPR have also been restored, bridging past and present.

Milan’s iconic skyscraper adopts a fresh identity

first completed in 1958 by the avant-garde collective BBPR

the concrete tower has long stood as a symbol of postwar Italian resilience

under the direction of Hines, Asti Architetti leads the architectural refurbishment

Torre Velasca enters a new phase

a newly created urban piazza anchors the project

a hybrid vertical complex that combines residential, corporate, cultural, and communal uses

its bold silhouette remains unchanged

its skin and systems are carefully upgraded

laser cleaning and manual repair techniques preserve the original grain and irregularities of the facade

a rational base rises into a dramatic overhanging crown supported by angled buttresses

project info:

name: Torre Velasca Restoration

location: Milan, Italy

original architects: BBPR (Gian Luigi Banfi, Lodovico Belgiojoso, Enrico Peressutti, Ernesto Nathan Rogers)

restoration lead architect: Asti Architetti | @asti_architetti

developer: Hines Italy | @hines

floor area: 34,000 sqm

height: 75 meters

engineering: CEAS (structures), ESA Engineering (MEP)

general contractor: ARS Aedificandi

heritage supervision: Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la città metropolitana di Milano

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Frank Lloyd Wright’s singular skyscraper, the iconic Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, is officially sold to McFarlin Building LLC. The sale closed on May 5, 2025, just one day before the property and its associated collection were due to be auctioned as part of a bankruptcy proceeding. With no competing qualified bids received, McFarlin secured the landmark for $1.4 million. The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, which holds a preservation easement on the site, expresses optimism about the tower’s future, citing the new owners’ respect for its architectural significance and their plans for careful revitalization.

Price Tower | image by John H. Waters, AIA

copper panels front the 19-story Price Tower

Designed in 1952 and completed in 1956, the 19-story Price Tower stands as Frank Lloyd Wright’s only built skyscraper. It was commissioned by Harold C. Price Sr. to house his oil pipeline business alongside apartments and rental offices, hybrid that embodied Wright’s vision of organic architecture. Inspired by his unrealized 1928 project, St. Mark’s in the Bowery, the tower is notable for its radical structure. Floors cantilever out from a central core, eschewing the steel-frame orthodoxy of postwar high-rises. Its copper-panel facade, geometric interiors, and asymmetrical form mark it as a true original in the American landscape.

The recent journey of the tower to new ownership has been anything but smooth. Once the pride of mid-century Bartlesville, Price Tower had fallen into disrepair under previous owners Copper Tree Inc. and Green Copper Holdings LLC, who filed for bankruptcy in early 2025 with just $216 in the bank. A series of legal disputes, utility shutoffs, and unauthorized collection sales triggered national concern among preservationists. McFarlin’s bid, initially delayed by court proceedings, ultimately prevailed, with The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy stepping in throughout to defend their easement and advocate for a sustainable resolution.

Price Tower, Dewey Avenue, Bartlesville, OK | image © Flickr via Warren LeMay

a National Historic Landmark secures a new future

Despite its struggles, the tower remains a National Historic Landmark and a touchstone of modern architecture. Its preservation easement, granted to the Conservancy in 2011, protects not only its exterior but also select interiors and collection items. John Snyder and Macy Snyder-Amatucci of McFarlin, the new owners, have a track record of creative adaptive reuse and are already working with the Conservancy to stabilize and restore the building. 

Wright once called the tower ‘An assertion of the American sense of itself. This upraised hand on the prairie is a symbol of American independence.’ As McFarlin Building LLC steps in with fresh resources and a long-term plan, the Price Tower may once again rise as a beacon.

exterior of Price Tower, March 2025 | image by John H. Waters, AIA

copper panels clad the tower’s facade | image © Flickr via Warren LeMay

interior of the corporate apartment | image by John H. Waters, AIA

interior of the corporate apartment | image by John H. Waters, AIA

15th floor double-height space | image by John H. Waters, AIA

Lobby | image by John H. Waters, AIA

Price Tower interior detail | image by Andrew Pielage

Price Tower | image by John H. Waters, AIA

image courtesy of Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy

project info:

name: Price Tower

architect: Frank Lloyd Wright

location: Bartlesville, Oklahoma, US

current owners: McFarlin Building LLC

The post frank lloyd wright’s only realized skyscraper, price tower in oklahoma, is sold to new owners appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

After nearly a decade of operation, the OMA–renovated Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice shuts its doors (find designboom’s previous coverage here). Duty Free Shoppers (DFS) Group, the LVMH-owned travel retailer that runs the department store, posts a quiet notice on its website: ‘As of May 1, 2025, our store will be closed.’ The news is followed by a farewell post on Instagram, thanking friends and customers for the years of shared experiences.

Venice was home to DFS’s only store in Europe, a space that regularly hosted art installations, exhibitions, concerts, and cultural events, particularly on its rooftop and in the central courtyard. Locals often used the historic building as a shortcut between Campo San Bartolomeo and the Rialto, while tourists were drawn in as much for the panoramic views as for the luxury shopping.

all images by Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti © OMA, unless stated otherwise

the history behind the 800-year-old building

The closure, announced in November 2024, ends a project that aimed to rewire a 13th-century monument for 21st-century life. Located at the foot of the Rialto Bridge, across from the fish market, the Fondaco started life as a trading hub for German merchants, later became a customs house under Napoleon, and under Mussolini, a fascist post office. Over the centuries it burned down twice, was rebuilt, stripped of its towers, filled in with concrete, and altered so heavily that by the time the international design practice OMA stepped in, little of its original structure remained untouched. Still, in 1987, it gained protected monument status, freezing further transformation in place.

OMA’s approach, led by Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, Rem Koolhaas, and Silvia Sandor, treated the building as a palimpsest, layered and messy. Their renovation, commissioned by the Benetton family in 2009, carved out new public paths through the mass, added a hovering steel-and-glass floor over the central courtyard, and revived the rooftop by transforming a 19th-century pavilion into a wooden terrace with panoramic views over Venice. 

the OMA–renovated Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice shuts its doors

as DFS departs, a new chapter begins

Inside, they opened up vertical circulation with new escalators, retained key historic rooms, and reinstated the gallerias as surfaces for frescoes, this time in contemporary form. The courtyard, once closed to the city, became a kind of indoor campo, a public piazza at the heart of the structure. 

DFS operated the space as a luxury department store, but that is only part of the story. OMA’s design was also about public access, civic energy, and rethinking what a monument can be. It avoided nostalgia and challenged the idea that heritage buildings must be static or sacred. With DFS gone, the future of the building is uncertain. Its protected status severely limits what can be altered, but its history shows that the Fondaco always adapts.

the space that regularly hosted art installations, exhibitions, concerts, and cultural events

locals often used the historic building as a shortcut between Campo San Bartolomeo and the Rialto

Venice was home to DFS’s only store in Europe

tourists were drawn in as much for the panoramic views as for the luxury shopping

OMA treated the building as a palimpsest, layered and messy

the courtyard became a kind of indoor campo

a steel-and-glass floor hovers over the central courtyard

transforming a 19th-century pavilion into a wooden terrace with panoramic views over Venice

OMA’s revamp carved out new public paths through the mass

its history shows that the Fondaco always adapts | image courtesy of DFS

project info:

name: Fondaco dei Tedeschi (DFS Venice) | @tfondaco

renovation architect: OMA | @oma.eu 
operator: DFS Group 

location: Venice, Italy 

date of closure: May 1, 2025

lead architects: Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli | @ippopeste, Rem Koolhaas | @rem.koolhaas, Silvia Sandor | @silviasandor

renovation completed: 2016

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German photographer David Altrath delivers a visual narrative of one of architectural modernism’s most radical dwellings—the Rietveld Schröder House in Utrecht, Netherlands. Designed in 1924 by Gerrit Rietveld for the Dutch socialite Truus Schröder-Schräder, the home stands as a three-dimensional manifesto of the De Stijl movement. Through Altrath’s crisp compositions, the series offers a fresh perspective on a house that, over a century later, still feels like it belongs to the future.

all images by David Altrath

de stijl’s legacy lives on in utrecht

Altrath’s images reveal the innovative structure of the residence, drawing attention to the relationship formed by the lines, planes, and bold primary colors that compose its visual language. With no fixed corners, sliding panels, and jutting planes, Rietveld dissolves the divide between inside and outside. Altrath casts his lens on this interplay of openness with precision, letting light and shadow animate the architecture’s geometric rigor.

The adaptable interior layout of the Rietveld Schröder House, where walls move and rooms shift to accommodate daily life, comes alive through Altrath’s series. His shots focus on the architectural decisions that challenged the rigid domestic norms of the 1920s, instead proposing a flexible, living architecture rooted in abstraction, freedom, and clarity. Now a UNESCO World Heritage site, the dwelling is one of the few built expressions of De Stijl principles in architecture. 

David Altrath delivers a visual narrative of one of architectural modernism’s most radical dwellings

the Rietveld Schröder House in Utrecht was designed in 1924 by Gerrit Rietveld

the home stands as a three-dimensional manifesto of the De Stijl movement

the series offers a fresh perspective on a house

even a century later, the house still feels ahead of its time

Altrath’s images reveal the innovative structure of the residence

lines, planes, and bold primary colors compose the visual language

The Red and Blue chair by Gerrit Rietveld

the chair was in 1917

the Zig-Zag Chair in red

the residence is one of the few built expressions of De Stijl principles in architecture

project info:

name: Rietveld Schröder House
photographer: David Altrath | @davidaltrath

architect: Gerrit Rietveld

location: Utrecht, Netherlands

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