The Pirelli Tower, known in Italian as the Grattacielo Pirelli, rises in central Milan near the city's main railway station, completed in 1960 as the headquarters of the Pirelli tire and rubber company. Designed by the architect Gio Ponti in collaboration with the structural engineer Pier Luigi Nervi, the building takes a slender, tapering lens-shaped plan rather than the rectangular block typical of contemporary office towers, a form chosen to maximize natural light and minimize the depth of interior floor space. At the time of its completion it was among the tallest reinforced concrete buildings in the world, and it remains one of the defining works of postwar Italian modernism. A small aircraft struck the building's upper floors in 2002, and the structure was subsequently repaired and reinforced.
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