© Fabrizio Castrignano, courtesy of Comune di Milano
Vogue World: Milano will support new initiatives to revitalize the municipal library in the Quarto Oggiaro neighborhood, turning it into a multifunctional space dedicated to the communal sharing of culture and creativity.
With the support of Vogue World: Milano, the Quarto Oggiaro Library, located in northwestern Milan, will inaugurate a new center designed to enhance the neighborhood and life for its residents, while also promoting talents in fashion, music, and art. It promises to become a contemporary cultural hub where creativity, expertise, technology, and a sense of community will come together.
In her 2018 work The Library Book, American journalist and author Susan Orlean draws inspiration from the 1986 fire at the Los Angeles Public Library to reflect on the role of libraries in public and cultural life. It is precisely this capacity of libraries to be much more than spaces dedicated to reading as they serve as public forums open to all and capable of nurturing talent and energy for the cities where they are located, as well as for individual citizens, that inspired Vogue World: Milano, scheduled for September 22, 2026, in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. As with past editions of Vogue World, from New York and Los Angeles to Paris and London, the proceeds from this major event will go toward social initiatives in the host country. The first edition in New York donated funds to the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund—an initiative created to support and train emerging young talents in American fashion. Vogue World: London raised £2 million for British arts organizations and Vogue World: Paris, in collaboration with Secours Populaire, donated a significant portion of the proceeds from ticket sales to enable low-income families to attend the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, as well as facilitate access to essential equipment for aspiring athletes throughout France. Last year, the fourth edition of Vogue World, which took place in Hollywood, raised $4.5 million for the Entertainment Community Fund to support costume designers affected by the Los Angeles wildfires. For the Italian edition, the focus is on the value of the human element in the age of technology. In that spirit, Vogue World: Milan will support the creation of a hub for exchange, creativity, and culture at the Quarto Oggiaro Library
Why Vogue World: Milano is supporting the Quarto Oggiaro Library
The theme of Vogue World: Milano emphasizes the value of craftsmanship, the human touch, and sharing in the age of technology. The support for the Quarto Oggiaro Library will transform a traditional space for sharing knowledge—through the lending of books for individual use—into a cultural hub where creativity, human qualities, and technology converge thanks to a new sense of community and sharing. Knowledge will be experienced as a collective endeavor, and culture is passed down through a human-centered approach.
Francesca Ragazzi, Head of Editorial Content at Vogue Italia, explains why Vogue World chose to support this particular project:
The theme of this edition revolves around the value of the human element and the need to preserve the meaning of doing, learning, and creating in an increasingly digital world. The redevelopment of the Quarto Oggiaro Library—one of Milan’s priorities—embodies this vision by transforming a place historically dedicated to knowledge into a contemporary cultural hub where creativity, curiosity, and community come together in a vibrant way.
Creating social impact today, at a time when the role of spaces for shared knowledge is increasingly at the center of public debate, means bringing new energy and opportunities to a peripheral neighborhood of the city through the creation of a space designed for young people but open to the entire community.
In this context, the project ties in with Vogue World: Milano and its broader reflection on the value of human creativity. In an increasingly automated world, making things, culture, and collective participation become tangible expressions of authenticity, relationship, and human connections.
This project opens up new opportunities for the younger generations, who will find in the spaces to be revitalized a new destination for learning, working together, creating, and meeting.
Tommaso Sacchi, Milan City Councilor for Culture, explains:
For us, investing in the Quarto Oggiaro Library means investing in the next generation. Libraries today are no longer just places for books: they are social and cultural spaces where people study, meet, exchange ideas, and spend time together. Vogue World: Milano allows us to rethink this library on a much larger scale, making it more open, more welcoming, and more useful to the community around it. A city’s cultural life cannot exist only in its historic center: It has to reach the neighborhoods where everyday life actually happens.
The Quarto Oggiaro Library, its history, and its future
The current building on Via Otranto once housed the neighborhood’s old public bath, while the old library was located at Via Val Trompia 45/A. In 2003, when the library moved to the renovated bathhouse facility, the old library became FabriQ, the City of Milan’s first incubator dedicated to social innovation. Just a few meters from each other, there are now two public institutions leading projects dedicated to the community in terms of culture, innovation, and urban regeneration. And while the Quarto Oggiaro Library was one of the first public facilities to explicitly focus on families and children—with shelves dedicated to the “Born to Read” initiative and spaces designed to build community as well as provide opportunities for reading.
Now Vogue World: Milano aims to contribute to making the Quarto Oggiaro Library an even more important gathering place.
Stefano Parise, Director of the Libraries Department of the City of Milan and Coordinator of Milano Creative City UNESCO for Literature, explains:
The redevelopment of the Quarto Oggiaro Library represents much more than a renovation of its spaces: it is a concrete investment in the future of the neighborhood and its creative energy.
Public libraries today are vibrant places, capable of welcoming, connecting, and generating opportunities, especially for the younger generations.
With this project, we aim to nurture the talent of Quarto Oggiaro’s young creatives by offering them tools, spaces, and opportunities for expression and collaboration. Quarto Oggiaro is a neighborhood rich in potential, and the library can become a hub for those who want to experiment, innovate, and actively contribute to the city’s cultural life.
The project linked to Vogue World: Milan thus becomes a catalyst for new energy and new projects in a neighborhood that has been the birthplace of artists across various disciplines—from rap to literature and including sports—and whose streets have been chosen by creatives such as Pao and the Orticanoodles collective as canvasses for their street art.
Barbara Tripodo, Director of the Quarto Oggiaro Library, concludes:
We are thrilled by the opportunity to collaborate on this project. The library must increasingly become an incubator of energy, supporting the initiatives of the neighborhood’s young people, promoting their creativity and encouraging the sharing of knowledge.
We are confident that the redevelopment of the library will have a significant impact on neighborhood life, enriching it with renewed spaces for social interaction, innovation, and the development of new creative energy.
Quarto Oggiaro, its grand park, and the history of its name
The Quarto Oggiaro Library is located on Via Otranto, just over half an hour by public transit northwest of the Vogue World location (or exactly 33 minutes by bike for those on two wheels). The windows of the first-floor spaces housing the library overlook a large English-style park, with four fountains and over 70 different species of trees. Within the park stands Villa Scheibler, an 18th-century country home built on the site of a hunting lodge owned by Ludovico il Moro in the 15th century. The building has been modified over the centuries to reach its current form, which also includes a chapel and a mistero—an underground passageway that connects it to the nearby Villa Caimi. The park’s greenery serves as a reminder that the neighborhood was once a small farming village, whose very name, Quarto Oggiaro, appears to derive from the ancient “Quarto Uglerio”: quarto, or four, refers to its location at a distance of four Roman miles from Milan, while Uglerio (or Oggiaro) likely refers to an individual or an early medieval family connected to the area. It is on 19th-century maps that the name Oggiaro is first commonly used instead of Uglerio, establishing the name that today identifies an area in the midst of a genuine urban transformation.
This article was originally published on Vogue Italia.
