The Best Western Falck Village Hotel is the result of a transformation of the former workers' club of an Italian company. It stands in an extremely interesting urban environment, surrounded by the houses of an early twentieth century Fordist village known as Villaggio Falck.
The original design was the work of engineer A. Franco and was intended to "connect" workers with the life of the company which - in exchange for their constant presence in the production plant - fulfilled all the social and housing requirements of its workers.
The village was completed between the 1920s and 1930s. It included a nursery school (the second in Italy to use the Montessori method), a primary school and a lower secondary school. The company's welfare system included summer camps and scholarships for the children of employees, insurance for medical care and spa treatments, leisure facilities and sports centres.
The hotel stands in an area that is undergoing a major transformation. The famous Genoese architect Renzo Piano launched the urban regeneration project in the area occupied by the former Falck factories in 2005. Piano's vision of an ideal city of the future respects the history of Sesto as a "city of factories" and applies the concept of a factory as a foundry or laboratory. His project for Sesto is entitled "Sesto: a factory of ideas". A huge green space (the biggest urban park in Europe), enterprise centres, universities and research laboratories are the pivots around which this factory revolves: a city in which everyone can feel at home.
The idea is seductive and the project is ambitious.
The hotel today is an observation point from which to view and understand a regeneration project that is among the most impressive in Europe. In future, the hotel will become the place to stay to experience the "city within a city".