MEET Digital Culture Center

About this place

MEET Digital Culture Center opened in October 2020 as Italy's first institution dedicated entirely to digital art and culture, occupying a building near Porta Venezia that dates to the early 20th century. The renovation, led by Carlo Ratti Associati with Italo Rota, is organized around a single dramatic gesture: a 15-metre-high 'vertical plaza' carved through the building's three floors, wrapped by a zigzagging orange staircase that becomes the project's defining image and its primary circulation and gathering space at once. Where the historic shell is largely preserved on the exterior, the interior is treated as an open, flexible armature for exhibitions, screenings, talks, and workshops exploring digital art, technology, and new media — a deliberately un-precious, adaptable container rather than a conventional white-cube museum. The bright orange staircase and the exposed structural interventions signal, unapologetically, that this is a contemporary insertion into an older building rather than an attempt at seamless restoration. MEET positions itself as a hybrid between museum, cultural center, and innovation hub, with a programme that shifts between large immersive digital installations and more research-oriented public talks. Its location near Porta Venezia, a lively, increasingly design- and hospitality-forward neighbourhood northeast of the Duomo, makes it an easy add-on to a day spent in central Milan.