Vettabbia Valley, Vettabiability

Vettabbiability Politecnico Di Milano Johnny Rizk

INDEX

1. Vettabia Valley as Palimpsest 2. Concept

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2.1 Choose of the Area 2.2 Existing Situation 2.3 Grids 2.4 Base: Points+Grids 3. Conceptual Elements

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3.1 Conceptual Elements 3.2 Water + Active Mobilities 3.3 Hooks | Eco-District 3.4 Vettabbiability 4. Cut-Out Area 4.1 Active Mobility 4.2 Water 4.3 Hooks Overview

URBAN PLANNING AND DESIGN STUDIO 2017/2018

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5. Management

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5.1 Moduls and Timeline 5.2 Actors 6. Hooks Zoom

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6.1 First hook 6.2 Second hook

7. List of figures

8. Bibliography

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1. VETTABIA VALLEY AS PALIMPSEST 1. Palimpsest As André Corboz says in his article “The Land as Palimpsest”, the border between rural and urban is disappearing, at least in mentalities and lifestyles. Territories are constantly changing (natural and artificial mutations). Man reinvents the territory constantly. It is the idea of the territory as Palimpsest. Planners often made a kind of tabula rasa of lands to be able to implant new buildings and new infrastructures.

Today, with the case of the quite preserve Vettabbia Valley, we must ask ourselves the question of the capacity of the territory to recycle itself. It must be seen as an old Palimpsest. The territory must be treated with care and adapted and improved on its current layout to meet current needs.

We care about the current problems of the Vettabbia Valley. Indeed, we think we have to respond to the concerns of our time. The new “layer” that we are going to create will probably reshape in the future to meet new challenges.

It’s in this sense that the territory as Palimpsest takes all its meaning.

Layers of Vettabbia

„The land, so heavily charged with traces and with past readings, seems very similar to a palimpsest.[…] the land is not a throw-away wrapper […]. Every land is unique, whence the need to „recycle,“ to scrape clean once more […] the ancient text where men have written across the irreplaceable surface of the soil, in order to make it available again so that it meets today’s needs before being done away with in its turn.“ Andre Corboz, 1983

2. CONCEPT 2.1 Choose of the Area The Area of the Vettabia Valley and connected areas are a really big complex and mainly defined by the Olona and Lambro River, but also from geological aspects. For the development of our concept we took a closer look to a specific area in the whole Vettabia. We decided to have a look there because when you visit

this part of the valley it feels like its seperated by all the highways and railways, which surrounding it and just defined by this vertical axis. So we had a closer look on the today problems of the Vettabia Valley in this area. The idea is to give soรถe scenarii to inspire the whole valley.

2.2 Existing Situation When you look beside the strong North-West connection of highway, mainstreets and railway you can see that there is not an existing eastwest connection. There is an existing situtation of unfinished structures of secondary roads inside the big linear structures for very local destinations.

The second structure is compose of the whiteways. They are part of the agricultural area and covering the whole street. But they are not accessible for passing through the valley for everyone.

The water system in these area is really complex.

It is compose of a big number of chanels for the agriculture and the Lambro and Olona as big rivers. You can see also a North-South axis, but it is not strong and just built by small and underrated chanels.

2.3 Grid We want to improve the water as North-South connection inside the valley with improving the bigger chanels and river areas.

The grey infrastructure with the secondary roads should be the base of the east-west connection that we want to etablish. The red lines show the development of new kinds of streets or improvements of old ones to become an active mobility.

So at the end there will be a net of infrastructural and natural ways .

2.4 Base:Points + Hooks As next step we added grid points to every strategic junctions in order to supporting the net of the grid. The market area is the space on we will concentrate in our following work.

These area will be improved and fixed in the overall context with hooks which will connect the areas.

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city center

city center

secondary roads

city center

agriculture roads

main streets highways

y roads 3. White schematic roads, agriculture diagram fields complexity issue of connectivity

water flow system

5. Water water flow flow, + secondary north-south roads

west - east north - south infrastructure

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water flow system

water flow, north-south

schematic diagram

water flow system secondary roads

schematic diagram

infrastructural knots

natural aspect - verticality additional west-east active mobility

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3. CONCEPTUAL ELEMENTS 3.1 Conceptual Elements So the four elements we will use are the transversal east-west lines as active mobility.

The river for a natural North-South connection.

The knots as points for parking resting and bike-sharing.

In order to connect this net the last important element are the hooks. In these we want to create a hybridisate Eco-District.

3.2 Water + Active Mobilities The most important element of our concept for the future of the Vettabbia valley is the development of active mobilities. Active mobility is a form of transportation that uses only the physical effort of the human as a fuel.

Its most developed forms are walking and cycling.

We take the part of developing only this type of mobility to the detriment of the car. Of course the valley now has some car roads, which should be kept to avoid a lock of the inhabitants of the valley on themselves. We are convinced that the valley can become an example territory in terms of eco-responsible mobility.

The Vettabbia valley seems to us an ideal space to develop this. In the first hand, it is directly connected to the city of Milan, which facilitates access by bike or walking. In the second hand, it is bordered by infrastructures that can become gateways where you exchange your car for a bike.

These active mobilites will function as east-west connection with active roads and in north-east direction as imrpoved water areas.

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3.3 Hooks | Eco-District In order to connect the attractiveness of the city with the resources of the valley, we imagine the creation of eco-districts in the hooks we explained in the previous chapter, often raw, between these territories.

The idea is to build buildings on a human scale. These are places of synergy between the scientific knowledge of the city and the techniques and resources of the campaign.

Eco-districts can become areas of research and innovation in agriculture and industry. They respond to a need of functional diversity, where inhabitants, farmers, employees, entrepreneurs and researchers cohabit.

The space of eco-districts can thus become doors between city and countryside. It makes it possible to break this geographical border, which according to us is already largely obsolete in mentalities.

Fig. 1

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3.4 Vettabbiability The project name “Vettabbiability� comes from the diverse meanings and options what kind of -(a)bility can be there in the Vettebbia valley: mobility, ability, trafficability, communicability, spreadability, biovailability, flexibility, sustainability, liveability, adobtability and so on.

Our concept explained in steps is first to improve the east-west connection inside of the valley with the active mobility roads.

We also want to strengthen the north-east natural connection in form of the rivers and chanels.

The last step is to communicate between the border spaces of the area, which are most the agricultural lands next to the city.

Therefore we want to create eco-districts in form of hooks for a transition between urban and rural.

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These steps make the Vettabia Valley acessable , attractive and give the importance and live back to it. They create a VETTABIABBILITY.

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4. CUT-OUT AREA

4.1 Active Mobility

The active mobility will connect the unfinished grey infrastructure and the not passible white ways.

By combining these layers its creates a carpet of mobility and flows. New points of the Valley become reachable and activated.

With the dimensions of three meters the active roads will include a two meter wide bycile road for fast passengers and a one meter wide pedestrian and slow bycicle way.

The stations for the electric bikes, which will be used on the active roads to reach the destinations faster, will be placed in junctions and interesting and strategic points. Therefor we want to improve existing parking places but also create new ones, where people can leave their car and can ride bikes.

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4.2 Water The water is the most hided and underated element in this area of the valley.

We want to improve the biggest chanels and rivers to strengthen the North-South axis inside of the valley.

So we think that the area around the water should be improved with rows of trees, stairs, which making the water area acassible and pedestrian paths next to them.

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CHANNEL unused

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4.3 Hooks Overview The Hooks will capture the areas over the borders of the valley and the cut out areas.

They will be the captivative part of the concept and will also lead more people inside the valley.

Also they are creating a green and hybridisated districts in the Vettabbia.

In these hooks we chose specific areas to improve and hybridisate the current situation in strategic points.

The carpet of active mobility and water axis will be connected with the hooks and so the carpet of these structures, innovative and natural elements, will get his edges.

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DEADEND +unattractiv area

INDUSTRY shutted area

rea

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5. MANAGEMENT

5.1 Moduls and Timeline

In order to put all the ideas in a operational way to implement them, we think about possible orders of realisation. We know the lack of public money for this type of intervention, so we take a very strong attention to the possibility of management and parternships.

In the following picture you see all possible interventions - Active mobility in red - Water improvment in blue - Creation of strategic knots in orange - Hybridisation of eco districts in green For each one, you can find, in form of columns, different levels of intervention, from the activation of these elements to a very complete and coherent development of them.

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We think that the interesting element is the fact that we can manage separatly the different interventions.

And for each intervention, we can go deeper in the realisation separately from other.

So our reccomandation is first, to activate the 4 interventions. This could either happen at the same time for every element or separated.

With this flexibility, which is created by this Time-Grid, it will be easier to manage the budget. The idea is to begin the process of Vettabbiability and to give visibility. It create chances to find opportunities of partnerships.

The activations of each intervention are representing in pictures of the next page by the “STEP 1�.

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In the following pictures you can find all levels of action for each interventions

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5.2 Actors

The interventions need the participation of differents actors in order to have a coherent coordination of the realisation.

The public actor is compose of municipalities engage, the metropolitan city of Milano, and also the bigger scale like the region, the state and the European Union.

Public actors play a main role in term of investment but also in term of visibility of the project. They have to be very engage and to captivate other private investisors.

We think that our concept for the valley allows to attract investors because it could be a future attractive place of Milan, turn in the 21st century.

Private investors can be the industries and cachinas of the valley. They know very well the situation of the valley and they can invest for this place in the one hand.

This investment can also help their own activities to be develop in the other hand.

In this sense, the idea of synergies between actors of the valley is very relevant.

In the next picture you can see and understand what kind of intervention each actor can make and how is the beneficiary.

Public Actors Tourist

Industry

Cachina

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Habitant

Worker

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6. HOOKS ZOOM

4.1 First Hook

4.1 First Hook

The first hook we want to have a look on is the one in the South-West of our chosen area. Its an area mostly defined by industry and residential uses. To connect each part of the hook but also connect the hearth of the valley with the border, we first improved the infrastructure in this area.

For this we put the active roads in this area. After this, we improved the river area and specific roofs with green structures and solar panels.

After this, we added some new structures for living but also as community centers. The last step is to activate some wasted places and complete the hybridisation of the area.

There is also new residential area in the south of the hook which gets the energy from the solar panels over the waterplant that will be installed. On top of the mall will be an viewing

and info points for the Vettabbia Valley. Active places can be find also in the industrial part in the south-west of the hook. Here the river becomes acessible for the inhabitants and its not longer blocked by the industry.

ECO DISTRICT, DIFFERENT TYPES OF HOUSING eco village, sustainable development with public ground floor facilities and services reshaped siluete of an agricultural land huge contrast suppresion

HYBRID - SUSTAINABLE DISTRICT multifunctional development for activating the river bank with public and residential blocks -

INOVATIVE INDUSTRIAL HYBRIDIZATION industrial eco house, self sustainable with reused roof for the fotolotaic panels public culture and art place, multipurpose

SOLAR FOTOVOLTAIC IMPROVEMENT additional solar power panels on water treament plant, providing energy for a new residential areas and power plant

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PUBLIC PLAZA WITH URBAN CHARACTERISTICS communication with a river bank, cultural events gastro, bars, multipurpose spaces, library

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ACTIVE MOBILITY GATE intervention for an active mobility reopened inaccessible industrial properties

GREEN, URBAN FARMING MALL ROOF additional value for enormous area of shopping mall with public relax facilities beatiful view to an agricultural land

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10,00 m 1,50 m Green Area Pedestrian Path

18,00 m River

3,00 m Active Road

1,50 m Pedestrian Path

Public Gardening

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26,00 m Row Housing

8,50 m Street

42,00 m U-Housing

8,50 m Street

19,00 m Public Space

13,00 m River-Stairs

22,00 m River

60,00 m Green Space

39,00 m Hybrid-Building Coffee, Office, Housing

8,50 m Street

3,00 m Active Road

3,00 m Active Road

4,50 m Green Space

17,75 m Public Space

186,00 m Mall with activated Roof

12,00 m Street

4,50 m Green Space

35,00 m Residential Area

17,50 m Industryhybridisate

by Solar Panels

8,50 m Street

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4.1 Second Hook The second hook is mainly defined by the hospital and its sourroundings. Here there will be parking spots improved by solar panels which can serve the new structures which will be build.

The area next right to the hospital will be a research and rehabilitation center which should improve the medicine knowlegde and standard of the hospital. This is an interisting improvment which show the potential synergy in the hooks.

A new residential area between the cityborder and the hospital will fill the gap and give more life to the valley. Terrace houses will give a stunning view into the Valley.

And activated park between the office buildings and the residential area will create a transition and buffer zone.

Also the chanels will be improved, by green surroundings and making it bigger.

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7. LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: https://www.archdaily.com/788158/studio-gang-designs-a-chicago-charter-school-with-principlesof-sustainability-and-wellness

8. BIBLIOGRAPHY Andre Corboz, The Land as Palimpsest 1983; p. 12-34