Walt Disney Italy HQ
Architecture, Interiors
The Walt Disney Company Italia headquarters at Palazzo Aporti is a 26,000 square-metre transformation of a monumental 1920s heritage building into a contemporary creative campus adjacent to Milan's Stazione Centrale. The seven-level fit-out consolidated three separate Italian Disney offices into a unified headquarters for 379 people under the "One Voice, One Vision" European corporate strategy. Interior fit-out budget: EUR 17,729,324. Delivered December 2011 and awarded a D&AD Wood Pencil 2012 for environmental graphics developed with Milan-based studio 45 Gradi.
The ground floor reception sets the tone for the entire building. An 18-metre White Corian laser-cut feature wall with programmable LED backlighting functions as a freestanding self-illuminated architectural volume, wrapping corners and defining spatial boundaries within the open palazzo plan.
CNC-milled apertures reveal abstracted Disney-inspired patterns that shift with perspective as visitors move through the space. The LED system cycles between blue, pink, purple, warm white, and neutral configurations, producing a different atmosphere for each lighting mode.
The client explicitly rejected overt branding: no characters on walls, no theme-park aesthetic. Instead, Disney's identity is expressed through atmosphere and material quality rather than literal iconography. Perle stone flooring and a bronze reception desk complete the ground floor material palette.
The spatial concept is organised around an Activity-Based Working philosophy that names eight workspace settings: Absorb, Express, Relax, Retreat, Eat and Meet, Play, Share, and Exchange. These settings are distributed across the seven floors as a curated sequence of distinct environments.
The bar and cafe area showcases the programmable LED system at its most dramatic. The same Corian panels that form the reception volume extend into the social zone, their backlighting transforming the atmosphere from cool blue to warm pink.
Bertoia Diamond chairs line the bar counter beneath Artemide Skydro organic luminaire installations. The pendants' bubble-form silhouette is a signature element repeated across every floor.
Saarinen Tulip tables furnish the cafe seating, with the furniture specification drawing from Vitra, Cassina, Knoll, and Driade. The taupe-coloured back glass behind the bar, Grey Oak timber veneer walls, and the Corian relief panels together establish a layered material composition.
The art gallery corridor adjacent to the reception displays framed Disney artwork on Grey Oak veneer ledge shelving. Directional spotlighting creates a curatorial quality within the palazzo's heritage proportions, leading to a dramatic backlit Mickey Mouse lightbox as the corridor's focal endpoint.
The Creative Studio is a glass-walled ground-floor workspace displaying Disney character sketches, animation art books, and figurines on open shelving. Its transparency makes the zone visible from the reception and bar areas, celebrating the company's visual heritage within the corporate environment.
The private screening room accommodates presentations and internal screenings with custom white leather seats embossed with the Walt Disney name and a Cinemeccanica Digital Solutions projection system with dedicated booth.
The ground floor's spatial depth is defined by the material junctions: Perle stone meeting Corian, Grey Oak veneer meeting bronze, each transition calibrated to read as seamless rather than assembled.
On the upper working floors, 45 Gradi's environmental graphics programme applies abstracted Disney character line drawings to etched glass partitions, ceiling surfaces, and environmental graphics positions throughout the seven levels.
Created by Marina Cattaneo, Silvia Grazioli, and Anton Stepine, this holistic environmental system earned a D&AD Wood Pencil 2012 in Graphic Design / Wayfinding and Environmental Graphics. The illustration technique is precise and restrained, the characters reduced to fine-line gestures that read as graphic art within the corporate context.
Level 1 houses 95 workstations alongside breakout zones with purple-blue accent niches and an academia area with Disney reference books and custom shelving. The floor's colour identity carries through organic-form poufs, accent walls, and the activity-based working destinations.
The woven vinyl flooring and acoustic panel system control the open-plan acoustics, while the purple-blue colour identity gives Level 1 a distinct visual character within the seven-floor sequence.
Level 2 inserts 116 open-plan positions and meeting rooms beneath the palazzo's original nineteenth-century brick vaulted arches. Modern glass partitions sit within the heritage structure, creating a layered dialogue between the monumental envelope and the contemporary workplace.
The heritage vaults impose a rhythm that the contemporary fitout follows rather than resists. Workstations align to structural bays, meeting rooms are framed by arches, and glass partitions sit where masonry walls once subdivided the floor.
The Level 3 executive floor serves 36 people across private offices, a lounge with Artemide Skydro pendants in warm orange-pink glow, and Grey Oak ceiling panels that define a more intimate atmosphere.
The material palette shifts to marble and stone flooring accents with teal and dark wood tones, reflecting the executive function. Tacchini Polar chairs, Moroso Saruyama Island seating, and Saarinen Executive chairs furnish the premium spaces, with terrace access providing views over the heritage arcade.
Disney awards and trophies are displayed in purpose-designed illuminated architectural alcoves with purple-backlit shelving.
The executive floor's teal colour identity and Grey Oak ceiling panels create an atmosphere distinct from the open-plan levels below, with premium stone finishes and Tacchini Polar chairs signalling the shift in programme.
Level 4 continues the Artemide Skydro lighting installation in blue glow mode with yellow as the floor's colour identity. Finance, Human Resources, and Legal occupy 81 workstations alongside a video conference room and meeting spaces.
The exterior terrace cafe extends the social programme into the urban open air, set against the Palazzo Aporti stone facade with parasols framing the heritage arcade.
The concept presentation records the material palette and per-floor colour accent system that organises the seven-level headquarters into a coherent whole: Corian, Perle stone, Grey Oak veneer, and woven vinyl flooring as constants, with red, purple, and yellow accents distributed across the upper levels.
Originally constructed between 1926 and 1931 as the headquarters of the Italian Post Office (Palazzo delle Regie Poste) by architect Ulisse Stacchini, the same designer responsible for Milan's Stazione Centrale, the building occupies an entire city block. After the Post Office vacated in 2002, the global real estate firm Hines orchestrated a major refurbishment, awarding the commission to Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel in 2006.
The Corian panel mockups document the prototyping process that validated laser-cut pattern, LED integration, and corner-wrapping detail before the full site installation. The Hines renovation restored the approximately 26,000 m² building to the highest international standards: zero CO₂ emissions target, renewable energy systems, smart building management, and flexible open-plan layouts respecting the palazzo's monumental proportions.
The interior fit-out was delivered by RBS Group as general architect, with M Moser Associates leading workplace strategy and executive design, Hilson Moran providing MEP engineering, and 45 Gradi creating the D&AD-winning environmental graphics programme.