Triennale Voce

Triennale Voce, the new space dedicated to music and sound, was built in an area of the Palazzo dell’Arte that had recently become available again for Triennale Milano and finally reconnects all the internal and external areas. The 330-square-meter independent room has two entrances – one from Viale Camoens and the other from inside the Palazzo dell’Arte. It has its services, coatroom, and outdoor area in the garden and is connected to the kitchen services, storerooms, and staff areas.

The construction of Voce is part of the renovation and functional conversion of the entire Piano Parco, a major project, now in its final phase that involves 2,300 square meters of interior spaces (excluding the Theater, which was remodeled in 2020) and 7,300 square meters of garden. This constitutes the most important intervention carried out so far in the redevelopment of the entire Palazzo dell’Arte, spearheaded by Stefano Boeri and Carla Morogallo, President and Director General of Triennale Milano, and entrusted to Luca Cipelletti, Architectural Director of the Palazzo since 2019.

Designed by Giovanni Muzio and beautifully manifested in Cipelletti’s design, the architecture—a rectangular framework supported by a system of pillars that creates three asymmetrical aisles—is reimagined as a cathedral with a wall and perimeter of modular elements instead of an altar. Meanwhile, on the wall opposite the altar is a subtraction, a hole, an equal and opposite element in the form of a cocktail bar, serving as a counter-altar and declaring Voce’s more social and festive dimension when appropriate.

Voce is an intentionally image-free space—aniconic—, its aesthetic being entirely dedicated to hearing, exhibiting sound, and its relationship with architecture, bodies, art, and design, with live concerts, multi-channel broadcasts, dance, meetings, readings, and other events.

Soundproofing, sound-absorbing, and sound-reflecting panels are left visible so that the technical aspect of the space becomes an architectural one. The panels encircle the walls with a 2.2-meter-high band and make up the ceiling, ensuring that the sound inside Voce is loud and clear but not heard outside and that its form matches its content.

The technical equipment’s visual impact is reduced to zero: no ductwork is visible despite the sixteen kilometers of cables laid for the lights and sound. The audio and acoustic design was carried out by Giorgio Di Salvo, designer, musician, and hi-fi systems builder; Lucio Visintini, a renowned acoustic engineer who previously worked on the Triennale Milano Teatro project; and Knauf, a leading acoustic panel manufacturer.

The lighting design, which allows independent control of the intensity, temperature, rhythm, and color of every 5 centimeters of the light sources, was carried out by Anonima Luci, a studio founded by Alberto Saggia and Stefania Kalogeropoulos that is taking the use of light in architecture in new aesthetic and technological directions. On the ceiling, the lighting follows the architecture along the dark line of the sound-absorbing panels, like in one of Gianni Colombo’s Elastic Space. Overall, the system involved the installation of approximately 350 meters of LEDs and more than eight kilometers of electric, data, and signal cables.

To make the room adaptable to different scenarios and uses, including as a dance floor, the British-Canadian designer Philippe Malouin custom-designed a modular system for Voce of felt chairs with visible stitching, produced by Meritalia. The design called for a long sofa on one side wall and listening stations with armchairs and sofas in the center of the space or small lounges along the perimeter, like in a typical club.