MIAW2014

In the contemporary age, the city is increasingly seen as an experiential field.

The new transformation processes are asking architects to become more culturally aware and sensitive as well as to read, interpret and implement the system of opportunities offered by the urban scenario.

Participants to the Miaw workshop identify spaces

20 14

in Milan that either have unexpressed potentialities either lost their characters, for several reasons.

MIAW

Leftovers which are marginalized and excluded from everyday life. From the smallest corner in the dense fabric to the large areas on the city borders, the Workshops worked to envision possible strategies

Sébastien Marot Alessandro Rocca Giovanni La Varra Jurjen Zeinstra Gennaro Postiglione Enrico Forestieri Héctor Fernández Elorza Giancarlo Floridi Matteo Aimini Helena Coch Roura Alessandro Rogora Claudia Poggi Renato D’Alençon Castrillón Andrea Gritti Marco Bovati Franco Tagliabue Roelof Verhage Corinna Morandi Mario Paris Lina Scavuzzo Michael Schwarting Giovanni Santamaria Antonella Contin Alessandro Frigerio Michele Moreno Haitham Nabil Sebastiano Brandolini Nicolas Gilsoul Günther Vogt Antonio Longo Talita Medina

revitalizing these dormant places. In a century that is overwhelmed by image, information and dynamism, it seems particularly important for architects and policy makers to recognize and assume the special role of the creative recovery of forgotten ISBN 978-88-6242-172-0

SCUOLA DI ARCHITETTURA E SOCIETÀ

of re-forming and

spaces.

Re-Forming Milan

The MIAW-Milan International Architecture Workshop is the International intensive programme at the School of Architettura e Società, it provides an international design forum for schools, teachers and students, but it is also an informal platform to discuss issues and share ambitions that education implies.

First edition, March 2015 © March 2015 LetteraVentidue Edizioni © March 2015 of photography and texts: their authors All right reserved Template design: Raffaello Buccheri and Francesco Trovato Layout: Giuseppe Esposito

jurjen zeinstra héctor fernández elorza helena coch roura renato d’alençon castrillón roelof verhage jon michael schwarting AIA / giovanni santamaria sebastiano brandolini / nicolas gilsoul

Curators Gennaro Postiglione Giancarlo Floridi Alessandro Rogora Marco Bovati Andrea Gritti Corinna Morandi Antonella Contin Antonio Longo Alessandro Rocca Miaw 2014 director Gennaro Postiglione Miaw 2014 Coordinators Andrea Gritti Alessandro Rocca

Contents

006 Introduction

010 024 056 086 100 116 128 166

Projects WS.A / Sébastien Marot WS.B / jurjen zeinstra WS.C / héctor fernández elorza WS.D / helena coch roura WS.E / renato d’alençon castrillón WS.F / roelof verhage DWS.01 / jon michael schwarting AIA giovanni santamaria DWS.02 / sebastiano brandolini nicolas gilsoul

006 / Introduction

Introduction MIAW 2014 is a series of workshops offered by the School of Architecture and Society with the intention of encouraging a multiscale and interdisciplinary approach to the architectural design. MIAW 2014 is an international forum which promotes comparisons between schools, teachers and students, but it is also an informal platform to discuss issues and to share the ambitions that the learning process of architectural design involves.

In the contemporary age, the city is increasingly seen as an experiential field. These processes have become more mature and culturally aware, and sensitive as well as to read, interpret and implement the system of opportunities offered by the urban context.

While metadesign actions, aim at the recognition of the value and potential of public spaces, through a descriptive approach in reading, decoding and contextually providing new opportunitiesy, while more formal planning actions aim at activating these spaces. In this sense, dismissed space and abandoned places, careless areas and brownfields, which use to be “swamped places” neglected by the official maps, become the paradigmatic examples of urban spaces which can regain with a new meaning, value and shape; offering significant the opportunities for creative resignification and reform of the city.

These occupation, reappropriation and activation actions often tend to draw in the urban fabric a “minor geography” capable of giving visibility and responses to the needs and forgotten desires of an “insurgent” city.

Participants to the MIAW workshop are invited to identify spaces in Milan that either have an unexpressed potentiality either lost their characteristics, importance for the community and have been, for several reasons, marginalized and excluded from everyday life.

From the smallest corner in the urban fabric to the large areas on the city margin, the Workshop wishes to illustrate possible scenarios of re-forming capable to revitalize these dormant places. In a 21st Century that is overwhelmed by image, information and dynamism, it is particularly important for architects and policy makers to recognize and assume the special role of the creative recovery of forgotten spaces.

Theme / 007

Theme Re-forming Milan Projects for areas and bu- ildings in a state of decay and neglect The School of Architecture at the Politecnico di Milano and the Department of Urban Planning, Private Buildings, Farming of the City of Milan have started with the beginning of the A.A. 2013-2014 the educational project Re-forming Milan. It is the involvement of a large number of teachers and students of the School in the study and design explorations relating to areas and buildings abandoned or in a state of decay located in central and eastern sector of the city. The initiative follows the path of the commitment of the School of Architecture and Society in itself as a place of preparation and experimental design on the issues of the city of Milan and its metropolitan area and discussion on these issues with the public and with the company civil. Areas and buildings have been reported by the Department for Urban Planning and represent a majority of cases recently surveyed because they are in poor conditions. They are therefore representative of the phenomena of sale, underuse, abandonment of buildings and areas, whether publicly or privately owned, of different size, texture, type, phenomena that affect the city of Milan with a strong negative impact on the quality of life of the urban areas in which they are located.

The project has had a significant development during the first two semesters of A. A. 2013-2014, with the participation of about seventy courses or workshops.

A selection of projects will be presented in an exhibition at the Triennale in Milan from 15 July until the end of August The themes of Re-form Milan will be faced with the mode of the intensive program from MIAW 2014. Were selected for the workshop some areas depending on the interest and diversity of project opportunities and the availability of materials documentation.

Projects

WS.A Sébastien Marot*

with: Alessandro Rocca, Giovanni La Varra

*Sébastien Marot is a philosopher by training and a critic in archi­tecture and landscape design. He has taught in several schools of architecture and landscape architecture in Europe (Geneva, Marne-la-Vallée, Archi­tectural Association, and North America (Harvard GSD, University of Pennsylvania, Cor­nell University).

WS.A / Sébastien Marot / 011

Miaw Papers Writing Architecture

Displaying Workshops Our team followed in real time, step by step, the design processes of the other parallel Miaw sections, whith the goal of spreading information among the workshops people, to our students and teachers not involved in Miaw and, eventually, to other students, colleagues and professionals who could be interested in the Miaw activity..

and our work sprawled on three different media environments, that are radically different spaces and specific domains.

The first media is the printed page, where we basically produced two main publications and some minor and occasional production.

The first product is “Miawspaper”, quite a daily sheet which constantly followed the everyday life of Miaw. The second one is the “W” book, a real instantaneous volume, which collects documents on the many remarkable theorical and practical Miaw events.

The second domain of our action is the physical, architectural one, where we gained a certain consistency occupying the Cube, the white squared kiosk in the atrium of our school, a small temporary pavilion which was built in the main foyer of our school in December 2013, in occasion of

012 / WS.A / Sébastien Marot

involved in Miaw and, eventually, to other students, colleagues and professionals who could be interested in the Miaw activity.

Another clear reason, for our work, was the collecting of texts, images and, generally speaking, memories of the Miaw experience, generating an archive that could be remain at the disposal of the School of Architecture. This point was particulary important considering that Miaw aspires to become a serial event, completely included inside the permanent program of the degrees, bachelor and master, in architecture.

Media Players Our work sprawled on three different media environments, which are radically different spaces and specific domains. The first media is the printed page, where we basically produced two main publications and some minor and occasional production. The first product is “Miawspaper”, quite a daily sheet which constantly followed the everyday life of Miaw. The second one is the “W” book, a real instantaneous volume, which collects documents on the many remarkable theorical and practical Miaw events.

The second domain of our action was the physical, architectural one, where we gained a certain consistency occupying the Cube, the white squared kiosk in the atrium of our school, a small temporary pavilion which was built in the main foyer of our school in December 2013, in occasion of the laurea honoris causa given from our school to the great Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza. Since the workshop’s first day, we used the inner and outer walls of this Sizian space as an infopoint, a billboard where to communicate through texts and images. We also transformed its interior space in a workspace, a sitting room where Miawers and other members of the large University populace can read our texts, meet and exchange opinions. There, we also installed a light tv set, where we did some of the many interviews with Miaw teachers and students.

The third domain is the internet, the virtual cloud where we found some cozy niches creating a blog, opening and filling a youtube channel with our videos, which refer to the interviews but also to all the open lectures given by our foreign and Italian guests. Blog, tv channel, a Facebook page and later the Issuu site, were an important side of our job, expanding information outside the walls of our school and opening media that probably will remain active also after the end of Miaw 2014, serving for the next editions of our international workshop.

The fourth domain, the fourth space, is the exhibit space installed at the end of the workshops. For us, it was a big table which became the place where the works made in the other domains, or dimensions, gather and leaves a temporary but clearly readable footprint. We put here, in

Miaw Papers writing architecture / 013

exposition, some copies of our magazine and book: the Miawspapers, the daily info sheet of Miaw, migrated from the not so far white cube and landed on the big table. And so did the internet, presented on the table’s large surface with a proliferation of QR codes which invite the visitors to catch the links and to get connected with our virtual pages.

Questioning Miawers A fundamentals experience was the continuous activity of interacting with the other workshops, making short reportage, pictures, informal talks and registered interviews. Our team was around all day meeting students and teachers, collecting information and opinions, recordering and writing about Miaw and its people every day. One of the main topic was the meeting with the foreign teachers, who, of course, represented cultures, approaches and way of thinking and working which were alien from the Politecnico routine. Our school is largely international, especially for the strong presence of foreign students but also for the composition of the faculty, but the Miaw foreign teachers were something different, in the immediacy of their enrollment in the Milanese workshops.

Then, interviews with them were colorful and surprising. Our students put direct and strong questions, and the professors answered with generosity and precisions, trying to make clear their specific points and goals. Some of these conversations can be seen on Miaw (Youtube) Channel and read on our blog (http://miawspaper.wordpress.com).

Book Making The making of the instant book was one of the main topic of discussion.

How to present a work in progress in the closed form of a book? While the workshops were still at work, we had to design and realize an instant book that should give a real perspective on the entire work of all the other team. In front of the impossibility to have a final summary of all was still in progress, our choice was directed towards a book which, even referring to the all Miaw, also could have its own personality and allure, freely selecting texts and images from the large variety of different and incomplete materials which we were facing in that moment.

(A. R.)

014 / WS.A / SĂŠbastien Marot

The Miaw Blog, http://miawspaper. wordpress.com, which documents all the main workshops’ events. Design by Leonardo Gatti and Saaed Rezaei.

Miaw Papers writing architecture / 015

The Miaw Channel, on You Tube, gives a complete and free access to all the 14 letcures and meeting of Miaw 2014.

016 / WS.A / Sébastien Marot

Selected pages from “Miawspaper”, the daily newspaper which documented the ongoing activities of the workshops and the events. Design by Marina Curtaz and Lucrezia De Capitani.

Miaw Papers writing architecture / 017

018 / WS.A / SĂŠbastien Marot

The Cube, for two weeks it was the W Team Mediacenter, an Info and meeting point, a working place and the TV best set for our You Tube channel; photos by Sun Zhi Xing.

Miaw Papers writing architecture / 019

The project and pictures of the installation realized by the W Section for the final Miaw exhibition, October 2014, at the School of Architecture and Society of the Politecnico di Milano.

Laura Solarino and Giulia Lavagnoli interview with Roelof Verhage, Thursday, 02 October 2014. 4 questions Feel the regeneration It’s here with us Roelof Verhage, a Dutch urban planner, who is also a professor and lecturer at the Urbanism Institute of Lyon. He’s the guest of Section E, hosted by Corinna Morandi and Lina Scavuzzo.

Q:Can you tell us something about your background and your academic experiences?

A: As I said I’m from the Netherlands where i got my PhD in Urban Planning and where I worked for a few years; then I moved to France for a “Marie Curie” fellowship for a urban regeneration project that compared the work of France, Netherlands and United Kingdom. After this program I managed to get a lecturer position at

Claudia Scaravaggi, Yafim Simanovsky Interview with Hector Fernandez-Helorza. 32’ 20”, 7 questions Q: What about you background and your accademic experiences?

A: When I finished the school of architecture, I received a scholarship for studying in Scandinavia. I bought a car and I was traveling for two years just for visiting architecture. I stayed in Stockolm for two years, and that was an amazing time. (…) Ten years later, in 2008, I came here in Rome to study architecture in the university and it was a wonderful experience. Of course even in Spain we study Italian history of architecture, but when you are directly here in Italy is different, when you are immerse in this country you really realise the background, and this is something to understand and to learn.

Q: Can you compare the spanish methodology of education and the scandinavian method?

A: I would compare it better with the italian one because we have a really huge background as well, we are really concern about tradition, history, and about the things that you find around site project. Instead in Denmark and in Sweden is really different because even though they have history, they traditionally build in wood so it is difficoult to find very old building, so when they begin to develop a project the background of the history is not that intense. From this point of view Italy and Spain are very related.

Q: In your projects there is a strong attention on light, material and especially on feelings. Actually is there are always so many elements that is like being in a kind of scenography or film set. What do you think about the relationship between your way of doing architecture and cinema?

A: I think that architecture and cinema have a strong relationship because both are adressed to the soul of the people, so they both affect directly the people. Moreover architecture, as the cinema, is an art. Of course the methodology and the tecnique are different, but at the end is the same: is the personal understanding of this part of life. I am not an expert in film, actually I am not an expert neither in architecture. But I have a very clear idea: after a film, after feeling a space, you can feel good or feel bad. There are people that speak about architecture with very difficoult words. I don’t want to explain it in this way, even my projects, I try to explain it very easily, because architecture has to be something easy, not something terribly difficoult to understand.

I try to understand the people that are enjoying the space, and while I am watching a movie I try to catch all the feeling that are beyond a picture. In the workshop we are dealing with an abandoned cinema actually. I decided with the other teachers to point out four small spaces, because otherwise in two weeks it was really difficoult, almost impossible, to catch the feelings of this places. We are working in Corso XXII Marzo in Milano, trying to develop a small area in a way I think is the most important thing that the student will learn during this workshop. This scale in which we are working is for me the most confortable to work with because in my office, I have a very small office in Madrid, I usually work with this controlled spaces.

Q: What kind of interventions are you planning to do?

A: It was quite interesting because, as I did in my school or I do in my own office in Madrid, when we begin a project you have to decide the program, because sometimes you already have the program, but in this case we have to resolve the program of the area that we have to develop. Yesterday we did a brainstorming, and there was a huge amount of possibilities on the table, and we decide different, interesting and modern proposals. I think that this area is a rich district in which live lot of old people, it is a kind of boring, it needs an input from of an other generation, a new activation, so we are focusing on programs related with young people, children, in a place where otherwise in few years will be death. Our program want to attract young people to the area.

The students are trying to deal with the problems in a very fresh way, because when you have to work with architecture you have really to have fun, it depends on the program that you are dealing with, and at least until today we are really having fun, especially me! This is the most important thing, when you are developing architecture and you are having fun, and you are smiling while you are drawing, I really feel that, afterall, somehow the people will enjoy your space and will smile as well. I feel myself more confortable if I catch in my mind just the way that you feel in a space: you can feel well, or you can feel bad, because for istance your are developing a cemetery. This is for me the central part of architecture.

Q: In your project is possible to see a strong relationship between art and architecture. For example in your use of the light, and in your use of the material, their treatment and their appearance. Can you explain us this relationship?

A: When you see a beautiful paint and you really feel this emotion of feeling it, and when you enjoy a space and you feel comfortable you really feel that it is something beautiful you really understand that art and architecture are linked and at the end is the same, and you can’t understand why. And this is the most beautiful thing in architecture: that sometimes you can’t explain why, many time is difficoult to put in numbers why a space really point out in your soul or not, this is the only thing I am trying to find.

Q: Are there some common elements in in all the workshops? Even though the projects are located in different places, is there an element that could be a focus, a sort of common line?

A: It is difficoult to me to say that because first of all I don’t know all the sites of the workshop, secondly it depends on the teacher, actually we have different approaches. There are some teacher that are really technical, it is not my case! Probably there are other teachers that are trying to get the students in the projects.

The co-existance of all this different approaches to architecture is very interesting. Maybe this is the point. I think that saturday, during the final presentation will be very interesting to see the layout of all the different approaches.

Q: What is your approach to sustainability?

A: I think that sustainability is something that should be present inside the projects, there is no discussion, it has to be there. Do we need a structure in a building? Of course, otherwise it will collapse. Do we need sustainability in our projects? Sure. Do we need that a building has an entrance? Sure. The traditional architecture was sustainable, so also the modern architecture has to be sustainable. It is only to use the common sense. We have to take care of this world.

Elizaveta Sudravskaya These guys are the real on-site workers! They have spent both Monday and Tuesday visiting the project site which is located in Corso XXII Marzo. The project area is a social housing block. The common spaces are in bad condition so the students’ goal is to re-activate them and create the social interaction between the residents.

The professors of this section are Jurjen Zeinstra from Delft university who made his beautiful lecture Tuesday night, Gennaro Postiglione MIAW’s director and Enrico Forestieri.

Jurjen Zeinstra choose the residential building according to his idea that this kind and scale of architecture can be considered a microcosm. The students have only two weeks of workshop. Therefore instead of analysing the whole city of Milan Jurjen have proposed to take its scaled model.

The students’ groups are working on different aspects of the analysys. Matteo is studying the history of the Modern Movement in Italy and British brutalism. Giovanni and Nina are dealing with the urban context. Bilyana is studying plans and sectons by architect Celado and his team. The room is full of documents and pictures pinned-up on the walls. The 1:100 scale model is getting ready. During the site visiting guys have talked to the inhabitants to figure out the weak and the strong points.

On Wednesday professor Pierini visited the section. She talked to students about her experience. Orsina Simona Pierini has spend many years studying the social housing in Milan area. In 70’s and 80’s the social conditions in Italy have changed so the old blocks became unudapted to the new reality. Milano City Council have decided to break them and build the new ones. Architect Celado and his team have proposed to keep the old classical facade of the building but change all the content inspired by British brutalism. The result is a surrealistic atmosphere that you fell entering the lot.

A five storey building has a lot of corridors and terraces. Some of these spaces are already occupied by inhabitants while the others stay unsed. And here is the students’ turn to change the things.

Leonardo Gatti, Claudia Scaravaggi, Yafim Simanovsky Interview with Sébastien Marot Q: Considering the saturation on the earth, in terms of constructions and urbanisation, and according to the main theme of the workshop re-forming milano, which is the relevance of architecture and the role of the architect nowaday?

A: I think that the city has been for a long time the basic reference for the architects. The city traditionally was something easy to destinguish from something else. Nowadays the situation is really changed. Now the word “city” is carrying so many things that is difficoult to understand what you mean when you say “city”. At least is not that easily distuiguishing from an other background. So I think that there is a little problem today: we don’t exactly know what are the territories that we are refering to. I was really interested in the research that Koolhaas did with his team on countryside, and I think he was right, he said that architects today are more focused on the city, but now the largest transformations are not accurring in what we call the city, but in what it used to be called the countryside. We should better look on what it is happening there, the way agricolture has been transformed drastically through the use of new technological techniques. We still have a kind of basic undestanding that the territory has been divided between the city that now we call metropoly and the countryside. The city has been transformed and the countryside is a place where the people move to, there is a kind of reverse movement, and this is a reason for huge transformations, not necessarily of the form of the villages yet, but for a completly different life. So i do think that we architects need to update our understanding of the all territory, we have to understand that is not divided anymore.

Q: Refering to the Jackson’s ideas of vernacular landscape what do you think about the landscape today?

Which can be the architect’s approach to the paysage?

A: Jackson made a distinction between three kind of landscape and three different periods. I think that his great hesitation is linked with yperlinks. Because they are both types of landscape, but also periods and regimes of landscape, that if you try to use them as categories in most of the situation you have difficoulties to distinguish one from the other one. So this is what let me propose the idea of yperlink. I really agree with him when he says that we can’t use anymore the metaphore of the landscape as a theatre. With this metaphore we think that we can see the landscape just from a point of view, and for this reason everything is clear and logical related to the point of you that we are assuming. Today with this superimposition of different logics and regimes there is not a specific point of view and they are simoultaneously there. For this reason we need to develop a vertical understanding of what landscape are and to make them in a way simoultaneously enjoyable although they are really different one from the other one. This is why I like the image of the ypertext: it makes you link together things that are completely indipendent one by an other one. This can be the metaphore of the work that architects can do locally. This different “links” are there together, so it is better if we accept them and then consider them as stories or layers that we have to deal with (not only buildings have stories, even landscapes). Rem Koolhas has a specific idea of skyscraper and my idea was to reverse this concept. In his opinion these buildings are a superimposition of different stories. When I started to write my book I really didn’t know which site should I use, because New York is really powerful, and I didn’t find a place that was enough powerful to do the reverse demonstration, untill I went to Cornell University to do lecture in Ithaca, I discovered a wonderful landscape of gorgees, when you look at a gorge that has been curved by the glacier and modified by the erogical erosion, when you look at its section, you will see that there is a sedimentar layer: the last compressed trace of an epoque of that landscape. So when you are in a gorge you are travelling trough a superimposition of landscape reduced to that compression. So if you think this and you compare it to the skryscraper you can call it “eathscraper”, and this is why I choose that site. This is also to say that we can look at the landscape sectionally and that there are four dimensions, because if you develop all these things you will have a section of a larger reality.

Q: Could you elaborate and explain us the quotation “give space to time and time to space” that you mentioned at the end of your lecture?

A: I always think about the environmental situation, I am very concerned about the evolution of that situation.

Colin Rowe’s work after his “Collage City” in 1981 was the article “The Present Urban Predicament” for the journal at Cornell, a criticism about the city and modernism and the need for the inclusion of Memory and looking to the Future. In our time you can simply replace the word “Urban” with”Environment”, because now this is the scale of the problem; this “sustainability” issue is mentioned around us every day. Throughout recent history people such as Patrick Geddes and Lewis Mumford expressed criticism about this focus on the concept of “city”, and tried to offer different views on a larger scale (such as the “region”). I take very seriously the book “The Limits to Growth” (1972), which I mentioned; it is the best book I have ever read on this subject of sustainability, it was very criticized when it came out. Everybody read that book! Rem read that book of course, Ungers read that book, and they were amazed and this brought a huge debate about this issue. The people who wrote it were people specializing in system’s dynamics, and talking about all these things like pollution and growth and sustainable futures etc. This connects of course to the idea of space and time because as they say “the clock is ticking”, and I think that one of our tasks is to give places a future, to give time to space is to actually give time to the earth. Doing a project is in a way entering into a conversation. It was there before you arrived and you have to try to understand first “what is the subject?” and it is not going to end when you leave, the discussion will go on, so you are not going to “solve” the question, you have to keep that in mind when you work.

Q: Specifically in the Italian/Milanese context, what is the relationship of MIAW to the idea of “nostalgia” and how can we develop it in an important way?

A: I cannot answer for Milan because I am less familiar with it, but what I think is that when everybody in a given milieu start saying that nostalgia is a “sin”, I wonder why. Why is nostalgia considered a sort of “evil”?

It is a Freudian repression of this feeling, and maybe it is justified by being an illusion of a time that passed, so you have to control what you filter into your work of course, but nostalgia is a feeling. It is a feeling that somehow the present is not what you hoped and these images come to you as an effect, a force that you reference from your past to project your future. It is a tool in a sense. Nostalgia maybe bad, but repressed nostalgia is even worse! Nostalgia sometimes pushes people to invent amazing things, like the Renaissance period as I mentioned in my lecture, I want to “unchain” nostalgia. To turn the past into something eternal, like Proust wrote, I think in architecture it will be something of an achievement. We should imagine that the world could be eternal, but be very conscious at the same time that it could stop tomorrow.

Q: Can you explain us the binomy site-programme?

A: I think that the site arrives before the programme. Actually in many situations the reason why we do a project is not that we have a programme. For istance when a big company leaves the city and the city asks to itself what can it do, they have a site not a programme. It’s never purely a programme that comes first, is more a dialectical binomy. So when we look at the planet and landscape then we add new questions, what can be the rhole of the architect? I think that at least is important coming from the site to the programme in any reason is interesting. There is a nice quotation from André Corboz: you can superimpose all the maps of the region of malpensa that you want but you will never reduce the dimension of the airport. This summer I went with a friend of mine to la ZAD, where some people are occupying 3000 hectars where the city wants to build a new airport, so they built a defense to protect the landscape. Some farmers has already sold their farms, other are still resisting, right now they are doing wonderful experiences, for example the permaculture, just spending a week there is refreshing.

Q: Expectations for this workshop, role, usefullness of interview in architecture.

A: I’ve seen the mission that you have here, reporting, documenting. I think that you have a rensponsability in a way: rasing the issues. The workshop is really ambitious. You have to be a kind of bee. You have to help them. Avoid cliché, it is difficoult because we are surrounded by cliché. A city is a place where you can have conversations: this is the most precise definition of what a city is. (…) Architecture is about conversing, gathering and exchanging ideas and the city are the places wheer you should share ideas.

This table presents a display of the work made by the Miaw 2014 W Section, a work which produced on three different domains.

The first one is the printed page domain, where we produced essentially two publications. The first is a Miawspaper, quite a daily sheet which follows the everyday life of Miaw. The second one is a book, a real instantaneous volume, which collects documents on the many remarkable theorical and practical Miaw events.

The second domain is the physical, where we used the Cube, the white squared kiosk in the atrium of our school, a small temporary pavilion which was built in December 2013, in occasion of the laurea honoris causa to Alvaro Siza. We have occupied this sizian space using it as a billboard where exhibit info, texts and images, and also transforming its interior space in a workspace, in a reading room for our documents and in a tv set, where we did some of the many interviews with Miaw teachers and students.

The third domain is the internet, the virtual cloud where we found some cozy niches creating a blog, opening and filling a youtube channel with our videos, activating a facebook page often connected with other institutional and non institutional pages. The fourt channel is the Miaw website that is still sleeping but we would like to take it to a new and real, or virtual, and better life soon.

The fourth domain is this table, the place where the work made in those other domains, or dimensions, leaves its temporary footprint, exposing real books, the newspapers migrated from the not so far white cube, and the internet, present here in a proliferation of QR codes which invite you, visitor, to acts the link to our pages.

(A.R.)

020 / WS.A / Sébastien Marot

Miaw 2014 Writing Workshop W Team students Matteo Calati Marina Curtaz Lucrezia De Capitani Leonardo Gatti Giulia Lavagnoli Margherita Napolitani Clarissa Orsini Saeed Rezaei Claudia Scaravaggi Yafim Simanovsky Laura Solarino Elizaveta Sudràvskaya Sun Zhi Xing tutors Alessandro Rocca Giovanni La Varra guest Sébastien Marot

WHO WE ARE? MIAW 2014 is a workshop divided into eight sections, each of them directed by teachers of Politecnico di Milano in collaboration with foreign guests of various universities around Europe and the world who are working, discussing and re-projecting some specific areas of Milan for the project “Re-Forming Milan”.

The Workshop areas include parts of thecity which are in a state of decay and are: Corso XXII Marzo, quartiere Rubattino, Cinema Maestoso and the area of the ex Macello. During the next two weeks students will be collaborating with hosts and guests of the courses, first analyzing the sites and their relatives issues and then trying to find the best solution to reintegrate the areas into the city.

We are section W and we are hosted by Alessandro Rocca and Giovanni La Varra with Sébastien Marot as the main guest. Our goal is to explain what happens inside the workshop classes through interviews, pictures and videos. While each section works directly on the projects we work behind the scenes trying to understand the meaning of each work and making a general resume of what happens daily. We would like you to interact and collaborate with us since WE, all together, are the MIAW. We tried to organize ourselves into “teams” to create a real magazine that will be printed daily and will be hung on the CUBE, an informative space located outside of the Aula Rogers. We are also posting our articles, pictures and videos on the Facebook MIAW 2014 so stay tuned and enjoy the workshop!

Elizaveta Sudravskaya Architecture is an obsession and nothing else Smoke’n’talk with Haitham NAbil “Architecture is an obsession and nothing else.”

Haitham Nabil Mohamed Mousa is a tutor in a DSW03 section and an ex-student of Politecnico di Milano. But wait…he is not just a student, but the one who won Archiprix International with his thesis The Scar City (Desert City) made with Professor Remo Dorigati. The project is a research on the environmental situation and the new towns in Egypt.

Nabil is from Egypt. There he has studied in Cairo University since 2002. After having worked in a couple of architectural studios he has moved to Milan to proceed with his architectural research. In 2013 he got his master degree in Politecnico di Milano and left for Japan and Germany.

He has already participated in MIAW but as a student. This year Nabil is a teacher. He told that the teaching is a half of an architect’s job: “You need the new thoughts to refresh your mind, to work with students instead of being isolated in office. It’s fundamental to be in touch with the research work and to have a scientific platform for your thoughts and projects. University pushes you to consider and to appreciate the whole city and the social context. It makes your vision wider and contextual.”

There are some strange people in the world that move like the rolling stones in the desert. The good part of these people is the architects, which follow their passion. As Nabil said: “If you are not hungry obsessed by architecture you have to change the career”. That is a hard road you have to walk being an architect.

“Architecture is just an obsession and nothing else”.

Mobile Scenographies Performance. Monday, 30 September 2014 As the second day of workshop starts we want introduce you to what happened yesterday on the patio of the architecture school: magical creatures were dancing around and floating on the space using “scenografie portatili”.

This is a workshop show and performance by: Pierluigi Salvadeo, Marina Spreafico, Vittorio Fiore, Arnaldo Arnaldi; and coordinated by: Marina Spreafico e Giovanni Di Piano. Stagecraft consulting was : Renato Aiminio, Daniele Bagatti, Claudio Cerra, Antonella Madau Diaz.

The scenographies were designed and built during this work that took place from september 14th to september 24th at the Politecnico di Milano in collaboration with Teatro Arsenale. The structures were made of wood, paper, fabric and metal; intended as prolongations or continuations of the body, creating a relationship between the dancer’s moves and the objects they were using. In the picture below you can see the scenography and the performance made by several students.

Giulia Lavagnoli, Laura Solarini Do you know anything about section E ?

We went into the classroom of section E and interviewed students and professors in order to know what is going on within their section of the workshop. At the moment they are working on the area of the Ex-Macello which is located in the part of the city known as “Lambrate”, specifically in Via Pitteri. This part of Milan used to be an historical site but right now is in a state of decay and for the past ten years has been waiting for a project of re-qualification.

Students are divided into three groups and they are trying to develop ideas on how to make the area as its best possible. Professor Corinna Morandi stated that the work is focused on urban planning more than building design so the result will not be a fixed project but concepts and general ideas on various solutions to the issues of the area.

We also had the pleasure to talk to Roelof Verhage, guest of this section who explained us some topics of this empty area and some ideas on how to re-occupy it again: he would like to create an open space in which people can safely walk around or ride their bikes.

At this point students are studying existing buildings in the assigned area mainly in functional terms trying to understand how to re-link the “ex-macello” to the rest of the city by giving a special characterization to the new site.

“We have to maintain some principle buildings, re-design and re-open this area to the city” said a student explaining his idea of urban re-qualification. Some of the ideas that came out so far included structures for social housing, offices and students dorms.

They are still at a starting point of research and collection of ideas and informations, let’s see how the project develops from today on. Good luck!

We were curious to know what were the student’s thoughts about yesterday’s lecture by Sebastièn Marot: some students said that was a very interesting lecture and very stimulating especially when he rode some quotes of Kevin Lynch’s books. They reflected on the phrase “hope goes with nostalgia” and they could not agree more with this sentence: we keep an eye on the past when we project something new. They are also glad about the book’s suggestions that professor Marot gave to the students. “I will for sure read some of them”, stated a student.

Yafim Simanovsky interview with Jurjen Zienstra. Wednesday, 01 October 2014 Q – Could you tell us a little about your own history and studies?

A – From the post-war 1970’s-80’s period in architecture where you might say that there was a strong position of Dutch architecture in the Team10 movement, in establishing a certain architecture that was very based on a human scale, people like Aldo van Eyck and Herman Herzberger were teaching in the school, but you could also see this movement already becoming a bit tired, a bit aged, you could see that there were some people that were their followers they built a lot of social housing, and of course they were very concerned about all kinds of social issues but there was a kind of lack of awareness of materials and detailing. But there was you might even say in the Dutch architecture at a certain time, a difficulty to relate to history or relate to a kind of cultural context because they were focusing so much on social-political issues that the idea of architecture as also kind of an artistic expression got almost as if people were suspicious about it, the idea that if someone has artistic pretentions he cannot be an architect because an architect has to work for the people. It’s a kind of almost socialist or social-democratic idea of architecture. I think Herman Herzberger and also Aldo van Eyck are great architects, don’t make any mistake about that, I really think they are very important, they have done very interesting buildings, but as this movement that they started became quite popular, you also saw that the intensity slowly disappeared and became some sort of way of working, and what was interesting when I came into the faculty at Delft, you saw people looking for a new kind of thing that would inspire them. So you had on the one hand people like Max Rissélada who was one of my teachers, he also gave a lecture here and did some amazing exhibitions, but he was introducing looking back at the very early sources of modernism so he was for instance one of the first to rediscover Russian Constructivist architecture not only as an architectural style but also to look at it as one of the origins of social housing for instance. I think these studies that were done in the 1920’s by people like Ginzburg with the Narkomfin building, but also studies that were not built, there was a lot of energy and a lot of condensed knowledge in these studies, and this was one of the very important sources also when I was studying, these kind of very detailed studies into configurations of housing. (…)

And of course this idea of these communal spaces, what people could share, this was also inspiring for us at that time. (…) On the one hand we were not very inspired by this kind of architecture from the late 70’s early 80’s, we were looking for something new, from some of our teachers we got in touch with this 1920’s architecture which we found interesting, it was kind of a re-appreciation of modernism, but actually to be honest, because of these studies of Russian constructivism there was a strong focus on typological studies, so you might say that the side effect of this was that our thinking about architecture turned to be quite diagrammatical, so we were very good in thinking about these housing models, you could make a corridor and from the corridor you could go up and down and make all kinds of complex project which combined different typologies into one building, and this is also a very important Dutch tradition, because we have a small country, it is very dense so we are always looking very carefully in housing project to be very efficient with space and all that stuff. The side effect of this was that there was less attention for materials, for detailing. (…) And then, finally, Rem Koolhaas which I think has an enormous influence on my generation. (…)

I was one of the first to make use of this European exchange, which is now the Erasmus program, and I studied in Berlin for a while, around 1984. (…)

When I started studying, in the early 80’s, like today there was a very serious crisis in the building industry, so I remember the first day I came to the Faculty in architecture, the dean was telling to us as first year students “you can look at the one sitting next to you on one side and on the other side, and you have to realize that only one of you three will find a job”. But actually we didn’t really care, because we were not so interested in becoming an architect or finding a job, because the welfare state was still quite generous in the Netherlands at that time. (…)

When I graduated at the end of the 80’s beginning of the 90’s, by coincidence a friend of mine had a small commission for building nine houses and he said “do you want to join me” and I said “ya let’s do it” and we had an office just like that. We didn’t know many things but we had a lot of friends who worked in other offices (…)

And this was great because it was the best way of learning these things, is by simply doing them. (…) I was already in my studies also interested in writing, in discussions on theory, I became a member of a magazine which is called OASE, it was initiated by students in Delft, especially from this group that I described before that was interested in Constructivist typologies. (…)

I made an issue on another topic that I find interesting which is the idea of kind of the “world consciousness” in architecture, for instance you could say already in very old architecture, a certain kind of microcosm of representing a kind of “world”, but you could say that is a very classical notion of architecture, and say “how does that appear in modern architecture?” (…) I wrote an article about Buckminster Fuller, which I also found an intriguing person, I didn’t know really if I liked his projects, but his ideas were fascinating. (…)

I like to look also at the boarders of architecture, when things are pushing the boarders of the discipline a bit. (…) What is interesting is that if you go to the boarder of things, you become more aware of what the discipline is about. If you only stay in the safe middle, your work also might become too restricted. So I wrote an article in that issue on the 1960’s, what was going on in art and architecture. I wrote one that is called “Houses of the Future”, [http://www.oasejournal.nl/en/Issues/75/HousesOfTheFuture#203] and I relate the work of Archigram, because they did a lot of explorations about what are the limits and consequences of thinking about housing in a very radical way, and I position them against the Smithsons. (…) You have to be aware that I wrote about it because it was part of the discussions going on between young architects. So when Rem Koolhaas appeared we were fascinated by him because he brought in these 1960’s tradition that we didn’t have in Delft. (…) He was also influenced by these 1960’s but he also was taking a position against it, because they were literally his teachers, so as a student one of the things is you have to “kill” your teachers to take over their position. So for us it was a great time. (…) One of the other editors of OASE was Mikel van Gelderen, he started at Delft a little bit later. We worked on a certain issue together and we had communications, became friends, but I never did any projects with him. One day when we were having a discussion we said “There is this competition Europan” (…) I said “ya, I’m considering doing this competition” and Mikel also said “I’m also considering doing this competition” and we said “maybe we can do it together, ya let’s do it”. (…)

Q – Could you talk about the role of writing in your architecture?

A – For me writing is a way of investigating something. If I’m writing, I mostly write not so much about our office, but I like to use writing as a way of researching. So for me that’s always the most interesting thing.

Q – What about today’s workshop?

A – I’m not doing this alone, they say I’m the teacher but actually it’s cooperation with Enrico Forestieri and also with Gennaro Postiglione, so what we decided was to take the area of Corso XXII Marzo, there we did an amazing discovery of a housing block, and the housing block has a kind of traditional late 19th century facades, but when you go in it’s completely new. This was for us a very interesting thing, because in a workshop it’s a very difficult thing to work on the scale of the city and to try to avoid just making a formal, diagrammatic scheme, where you can say “ya, I work with this axis, and this block”, of course you can do it, you can make schemes in a very short time, you can make a beautiful urban scheme in two weeks, it’s not a problem, but you have to think what is the relevance of this? Of course I can make something beautiful on an urban scale which has towers and slabs, but will it ever be done like this? What is the context that you are working in? So we said, let’s use this block as a kind of microcosm of the city. You could say there is a strange thing happening, some parts are very ugly, some parts are maybe even beautiful, some parts are occupied by the people that who live there, there is this strange thing of a combination of historic facades, and new elements, this block is not a piece of very known architects, many people in Milan don’t even know it. We used it like a found object, something that you discover, and we will concentrate just on this one block.

Q – Do you have any nice sketches ready to show?

A – Well I asked the students this morning to put everything on the wall, because I want to have a kind of atmosphere a little bit like what you find if you look at detective series on the television, you see the team is coming and they say “here are the photos of the crime scene, here is the picture of the victim with the bullet through his head, and here these are the victims” and they draw lines and they have these meetings and update each other, and they go away and work on the laptop and come together for the meeting. It’s very important that it’s not only digital, like dropbox and sharing information, but also really see the information.

When I walked in the room this morning I said “No, it’s an empty room, it’s not a space to work in”. It has to be visible. We divided the students in sub-groups so all the sub-groups are working on different small parts of this project. Some are doing interviews with inhabitants, some are doing interviews with the architect, and they discovered who the architect is. Some are doing a little bit of historic research about the background of social housing in Italy, so everyone is doing a small fragment. But it’s very important to also get the larger picture and therefore you need this kind of pin-upp thing and this idea of a police station working on a crime scene.

the Urbanism Institute of Lyon, which I am currently occupying.

Q: Can you make a comparison between the French urban planning method and the Italian one?

A: There’s a difference between urban planning in France and in Italy: the urban planner profession in Italy came out of the architecture tradition with emphasis on urban design and the form; whereas in France urban planning came out of territory analysis, geography and there’s a strong link to urban sociology and human sciences approach. We’re both working on the same things but from different angles.

Q: What are your actual and future projects?

A: I just finished a big project: a book with some colleagues of London on planning property developement and risk, how to develop urban areas in a situation in which we rely on private investments. We analyzed several projects from the Netherlands trying to understand what is the role of the public center in obtaining subjects in the urban regeneration projects.

My other project is a bit more personal and is about my academical career in France: I’m working on a document called habilitation diriger rechercher that will show the work I’ve been doing in the field of research and this will enable me to advance in my career.

Q: Is there any common topics in your works?

A: The things that always come back are urban regeneration of the decayed parts of the city and a strong interest for the land developement. It’s very important to understand how the transformation of the land has to be done and what it involves in terms of actors and owners: I think it explains a lot about how regeneration works. Another main topic is european comparison: I try to work in between France, the Netherlands, Italy and the United Kingdom because I think it’s very interesting to know and compare different points of view.

Q: What is your opinion about the program Re-forming Milan ?

A: I think we’re still quite far from the actual realization of this project, but at this initial stage it is important to think about what are the possibilities we have and what’s the future we want for the city.

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Selected pages from the instant book W. Author is the Section W, book design by Leonardo Gatti and Claudia Scaravaggi.

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WS.B Jurjen Zeinstra*

with: Gennaro Postiglione, Enrico Forestieri Participants: Nina Biemmi Eugenia Bolla Maria Bottani Irene Curatolo Laura Giannini Cristina Gratton Giovanni Gualdrini Binnaz Kalcioglu Sandy Jiyoon Kim Antonio Laruffa Marco Mannacio Soderini Mattia Marin Gaia Masera Meltem Ozbek Teresa Pontini Yuri Rocco Bilyana Savova Cecilia Stoppani Ilgin Ezgi Tunc Gerardo Vidal Poma Yang Yunting Zhao Qichao

*

Jurjen Zeinstra studied architecture at the TU Delft and has been editor of the architectural magazines OASE, Forum and currently DASH. Together with Mikel van Gelderen he founded Zeinstra van Gelderen, that has realized various projects like the Rubber House (2010) and two IJdock buildings (2013) in Amsterdam. He works part-time as acting associate professor in the Chair of Interiors, TU Delft.

Thanks to Architect Gianni Celada for his helpfulness in the research and for kindly providing us original documents about Corso XXII Marzo project

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Lost & Found An urban block on Corso Marzo XXII In the urban fabric of a city, transformations are a normal and necessary condition. These transformations are most visibly expressed in the mixed variety of facades that surround the streets and squares of the city. Transformations will also take place behind the facades: in the buildings, the rooms and of course the lives of the people that live and work behind them. In the end those continuous transformations, both the planned and the unplanned, are what defines the character of the city. Transformations are without doubt connected to questions of politics and ideology, taking into account the both complex and banal operations of real estate development and speculation. At the same time this question is immediately related to the daily lives of the people, the way they organize their lives and in the way they try to make a living, in the most broadest sense of the word. Transformations appear in all the different scales, from the regional to the very detailed scale of an entrance-door. They open our eyes to both the rich traditions and the many different and often forgotten experiments that the city, and especially Milan, has been confronted with in the last centuries. In preparing our contribution to the MIAW workshop Ri-formare Milan we have found such a ‘lost’ experiment: the perimeter block north of Corso

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Marzo XXII, between Via Calvi and Via Fiamma.

When you walk along Corso Marzo XXII, coming from the Madonnina that is overlooking the city, the regular rhythm of the quiet late 19th century facades is suddenly interrupted. At the corner with Via Calvi a 20th century brutalist concrete piece, just next to a prototypical Beruto building block, is drawing your attention. It’s clearly not one of the iconic post-war projects that have made Milanese architecture so famous and most people will simply dislike this expressive piece of late Modern architecture. When you come closer, passing the pharmacy, you will notice that this corner has a wide entrance to a courtyard. The moment you enter this space, something remarkable happens: suddenly you find yourself in the periphery of any European metropolis.

A long U-shaped housing-project surrounds you. The middle space contains not only the courtyard, but also a Corbusian social centre, placed in an oblique angle, faces this courtyard. You will probably look up, noticing the expressive concrete staircases that lead to the three long galleries that give access to the apartments. Then if you climb up these stairs, you will notice how this wide galleries not only give access to the dwellings: they also show the appropriating by the inhabitants.

You will find pots with flowers in left-over corners, washing racks, benches and chairs, but also little statues of the Holy Virgin placed in the niches for the gas-meter next to the front door. If you continue walking on the lower gallery, you will discover a raised deck behind the social centre, connected to gallery by a series of small bridges. The lay-out of the deck again shows the oblique angle that you noticed in the social centre-building. If you step on this deck, you sense the almost ideological ambition to create a collective open space in this social housing project. Despite its abandoned and worn out character, the space still recalls the positive intentions connected to this type of architecture, which had its heydays in the 1970’s.

It’s not a masterpiece. In some parts it’s even rather banal and in other parts it shows the kind of deteriorated concrete architecture that has gained a cult status on contemporary blogs and websites: especially when you have reached the end of the deck and look at the semicircular car ramp, revealing the deep parking garage under your feet, you might be surprised by the almost Roman tectonics of the sunken ramp.

At this point you realize that the generic 19th century Beruto planfacades that you have passed by, walking along this city-block, are literally masking a unique huge late-Modern social housing project. And from that moment on, the facades at Via Calvi and Via Fiamma will never look the same to you.

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As far as we are concerned, this building shows, in a nutshell, the schizophrenic complexities and challenging potentials of the modern city. In that sense it may be regarded as a microcosm of the city. The peripheral housing project returning to the city, not only respecting the block structure of the traditional city but hiding behind the mask of the traditional facades. At the same time this project shows the ideology of the heroic social housing of the 1970’s and 1980’s, hidden in the courtyard, almost like a time-machine. So now, in 2014, in an area in Milan that is confronted with ongoing gentrification and transformation, we think it is time to pay attention to this lost project and to encounter, within this microcosm, opportunities for new layers of interventions that may reactivate it: In the Air, At the Gate, Underground, On the Skin, On the Stage...

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1889 - Beruto masterplan: the site appears in the Municipal maps

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1975 - Piano di edilizia economica e popolare: special concern on urban regeneration of abandoned and neglected areas

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1960 - 1990 A brief History of Urban (RE)generation: what can we learn from XXII Marzo area?

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2014 - RI-Formare Milano: strong emphasis on regeneration of abandoned and neglected urban areas 44 4

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Attivare processi di rigenerazione urbana incentrati sulla cura del territorio, il recupero e il riuso alle diverse scale

In attesa Alberto Ferlenga Curatore Triennale Architettura

Ada Lucia de Cesaris Vice sindaco e assessore all’Urbanistica, Edilizia Privata, Agricoltura

Il Comune di Milano ha fin da subito deciso di creare una sinergia con la Scuola di Architettura e Società, collaborando a questo progetto didattico di ri-forma dell’urbanistica e dell’edilizia Milanese, considerando le esplorazioni progettuali relative ad aree ed edifici in stato di degrado un passaggio decisivo per ripensare ai tessuti sia fisici sia sociali della città, considerandoli un’importante risorsa per attivare processi di trasformazione urbana incentrati sulla rigenerazione, sul recupero, sul riuso, alle diverse scale.

Fin dalla revisione il Piano di Governo del Territorio, approvato nel 2012 e, oggi, il Nuovo Regolamento Edilizio sono stati l’occasione per avviare sul territorio una politica che mira a un modello di sviluppo più equilibrato e sostenibile, che mette al centro la città pubblica. A partire da questo presupposto, la quasi totalità delle nuove previsioni insediative, hanno riguardato aree già urbanizzate, puntando sul contenimento del carico urbanistico e del relativo consumo di suolo, salvaguardando le aree agricole e promuovendo la valorizzazione dell’ambiente e del paesaggio. Uno tra i principali obiettivi sarà quello di intensificare e semplificare l’azione di rigenerazione, dotandosi di strumenti regolamentari di intervento più efficaci, immediatamente eseguibili nell’ottica di razionalizzare il patrimonio edilizio esistente nonché agevolare la riqualificazione di aree fortemente degradate, con la consapevolezza che il fenomeno dell’abbandono incide sulla collettività creando un forte impatto sul paesaggio urbano. All’interno del Regolamento Edilizio Comunale recentemente adottato, la disciplina relativa alla “qualità dell’abitato” ha l’obiettivo di creare dei sistemi virtuosi che consentano il presidio di quei luoghi che i proprietari non hanno la possibilità di utilizzare subito, fintanto che per loro non si renda attuabile un recupero più completo. Nell’ambito di questa nuova visione della città, è stata creata in collaborazione con le Zone e i cittadini una mappatura e una schedatura degli immobili privati in stato di degrado e di abbandono richiamando la proprietà alla cura e alla messa in sicurezza dei loro immobili.

Questa rappresenta una prima fase conoscitiva di un lavoro più ampio sul territorio cittadino, con la finalità di rigenerare e ricucire il tessuto urbano della città esistente.

Chissà che cosa avrebbe pensato Testori di una Milano senza nebbia, con le fabbriche trasformate in loft e gli edifici, “di periferia”, lustrati da un “upgrade” sociale imprevedibile solo pochi anni fa. Mentre la città dà sfogo alla sua voglia di assomigliare alle sorelle ricche del mondo e assiste alla crescita dei primi sparuti grattacieli “globali” (uno “locale”, il Pirelli, l’avevamo avuto prima degli altri, in Europa) il rischio che perda se stessa è forte.

Milano è sempre stata una città particolare che si esprimeva più in ciò che celava che in ciò che esponeva. A un teatro come la Scala la cui facciata era già ritenuta sgraziata ai tempi della costruzione, ai monumenti storici falsificati, la città contrapponeva un “dietro le quinte” tutto suo. Oltre la compostezza delle sue strade, dove non era il singolo edificio a contare ma la qualità diffusa, si poteva incontrare la bellezza nascosta delle sue corti, vuoti geometrici la cui natura collettiva si rafforzava replicandosi e si conservava intatta transitando dai magnifici cortili della Ca’ Granda a quelli domestici delle case a ringhiera o dei palazzi.

Ancor oggi, la salvaguardia delle identità milanesi è affidata più a ciò che non si vede che a ciò che si vede. Mentre gli interventi più recenti ci ricordano immagini già viste altrove, ciò che non appare più in primo piano preserva qualcosa di quello speciale carattere della città, che è sempre stato fatto più di relazioni tra edifici e spazi che di edifici e spazi in sé.

Quando l’uso lascia qualunque costruzione, il degrado inizia inesorabilmente il suo corso, ma la sospensione del tempo e l’abbandono hanno come conseguenza anche quella di collocare i luoghi inutilizzati in uno stato speciale. Nella condizione di stasi, alcuni valori si conservano quasi intatti, altri mostrano potenzialità non scontate. Nella Milano in attesa di nuova vita, non sono molte le architetture eccezionali, più significativi soni i vuoti, gli interni e le relazioni. Nelle fabbriche abbandonate si è preservata un’articolazione spaziale che la città ufficiale sta perdendo, nei vuoti recintati e negli edifici sbarrati, una disponibilità che non necessariamente richiede il riempimento, negli edifici della modernità una qualità dell’abitare oggi quasi scomparsa.

Per questo, intervenire sul vasto patrimonio di aree e costruzioni “fuori uso” non è solo una esercitazione accademica. Sottrarre i luoghi alle trasformazioni occasionali per considerarli nel loro insieme rende possibile guardare ai valori perduti, immaginare, attraverso i progetti dei più giovani, una città nuova che sulla vecchia appoggi fortemente le sue radici.

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1988 - Construction phase: keeping the XIX faรงades

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1981 - First proposal: longitudinal section

1991 - The residential block is complete. The Municipality requests a 5 storey parking in the courtyard

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1988 - Section - Axonometry: detail of the Corbusian social centre inside the courtyard

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1981 - South elevation on Corso XXII Marzo

1981 - Transversal section: where the Past meets the Eighties

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FIVE PROJECTS

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AT THE GATE Maria Bottani, Marco Mannacio Soderini, Gaia Masera, Teresa Pontini e Gerardo Vidal Poma

A clear cut that redefines the transition between public space and community courtyard

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commercial front

removing shop volumes

Public space merges into the courtyard through a new portico

new permeability

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UP IN THE AIR Laura Giannini, Binnaz Kalcioglu, Antonio Laruffa e Yang Yunting

Something in the air, that radically changes the atmosphere of the courtyard

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Light, temporary elements fill up the space with electric energy enabling a festive atmosphere to happen, at least until the following dawn.

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UNDERGROUND Cristina Gratton, Sandy Jiyoon Kim, Yuri Rocco, Bilyana Savova e Cecilia Stoppani

Erasure as a tool to create delightful conditions to inhabit abandoned spaces

Lost & Found / 049

Cafeteria ¡ Community centre: -1 floor

Workshop spaces: -2 floor

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050 / WS.B / J. Zeinstra

ON THE SKIN Irene Curatolo, Giovanni Gualdrini, Mattia Marin e Ilgin Ezgi Tunc

History repeats: after ‘80 project a new layer is now trying to resonate with both façades

Lost & Found / 051

Co-existing elements from different centuries XIX façade: delicate decoration and small balconies XX façade: the strets in the air” articulate the bidimensional surface of the rendered façade XXI façade: custom, extra spaces with different degrees of permeability reinterprete the XIX scheme and deal with the modern façade Repetition and variations: a simple catalog of elements tunes up the actual and previous façades

XIX - XX - XXI projects meet in the transversal section

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ON THE STAGE Nina Biemmi, Eugenia Bolla, Meltem Ozbek e Zhao Qicha

Emphasizing lights and shadows to enable the conditions for an unexpected theatre

Lost & Found / 053

Ground floor

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continuity red ribbon attractiveness public space

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scenography

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temporary curtain

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MIAW 2014: Lost & Found Politecnico di Milano · Spazio Mostre · 4-23 October 2014

Lost & Found / 055

WS.C Héctor Fernández Elorza

with: Giancarlo Floridi, Matteo Aimini Participants Federico Bordoni Francesca Cosenza Giorgia Crepaldi Laura Dedè Nadica FIlipovic Margherita Grechi Federica Gusa Nina Jakic Nikola Lik Man Jelenkovic Sacha Kanah Stepan Khmyz Teodora Koinova Anja Kunic Ganlin Li Liana Mandrazhieva Andrea Manfredini

*

Enrico Miglietta Kristina Mileska Ivan Moiseenko Federica Nani Federico Panella Lilit Poghosyan Diana Ranghetti Valentina Rao Gabriella Rossi Enisa Selmaj Seyedhamidreza Serajy Liu Suyao Elisa Versari Benito Zanzico Chao Zheng

Héctor Fernández Elorza was born in Zaragoza in 1972. Architect degree at Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid, ETSAM, in 1998 where he is since 2001 lecturing professor in Architectural Projects.He has been Visiting Professor and lecturer at the schools of Architecture: Architecture Nordostniedersachsen Universität Hamburg, NTNU University in Trondheim, Norway, Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole in Copenhague, Fachhochshule Koln in Germany and Universidad Católica de Rio de Janeiro in Brasil.

Awarded with International Prize AR+D from the British Architecture Association, RIBA, Finalist in the COSENZA PRIZE 2005 and Finalist in the BIENAL DE ARQUITECTURA ESPAÑOLA 2005 with the Architectural Documentation Centre in Madrid.

Urban Voids / 057

Urban Voids

An investigation about urban potential of open spaces

Milan’s School of Architecture at Via Amperé revolves around an internal plaza: an open courtyard where students may fall in love and teachers from time to time conspire. Opposite, teachers, students, families of graduates and street vendors meet right out of the college in a kiosk.

In this kiosk I spent the best moments of my stay in Milan on the occasion of the workshop MIAW 2014. Accompanied by Giancarlo Floridi and Matteo Aimini, architects and colleagues based in that architectural school, we planned our “assault” to supermarkets in the area, to collect cartons and boxes to make models, to decide the work area and to think the organization of the course. It was decided to refuse from a boring theoretical repertoire, and work under the basic concept of “amusement” or “entertainment”. We suggested the students to express themselves in the most open manner, without conventions, and with a large degree of fantasy based on the opportunities in the area of Milan March XXXIII. A huge model 3 x 3 meters in 1/50 scale was built the first day. We met twice a day around it to express our dreams and frustrations.

The incredulous faces of the students during the first meeting were transformed into smiles that spread to the whole course. We assumed

058 / WS.C / Héctor Fernández Elorza

that their projects could, for example, “fly”, “evaporate” or “buried”. The talks were extended beyond the classes; to that kiosk, restaurants in the area, or even the terraces and staircases of the faculty. I spent four days in Milan between cigarettes, “tramezzino” and “birra”, between the surprise of the first day and the trust of the end. On the model were emerging projects that strengthened an area of Milan with an intense gray and boring character.

The proposal “Cinema Cristallo” demonstrates how architecture may fly or the streets of Milano can (and should) be extended beyond their own sidewalks. What may be better to an old theater to remain without gates into the city? The project “At the drive-in” creates a huge urban place that may transform through air convertible mechanisms and that allows cultural activities between two side walls. A big cavity that is difficult to find in our cities.Plat-Phant” fights “on the back of an elephant” to make sleeping in a hostel become something more than a continental breakfast; are good example of this intentions the lobby, turned into a forest, and the flat deck, with the common facilities of the building, like the gym or the restaurant, over the city. The proposal “Co-wall-inks” shows that a thick concrete wall, rather than a locking system, may protect a light transformable space and connect it with the street. Two large openings with a “city” scale serve as connecting gap between these two worlds. The proposal “Sport center” is a commitment to release a street corner without losing the possibility of a sports use.

A project that has dreamed of buried vertical stratification with strong chiaroscuro, with a program that often extends horizontally. A few feet away, the project “Vertical Square” uses a similar strategy. It seems to go above the city level with a ramp system from the point that the previous project buried. In this case, trading stands and stalls creates a vertical market, allowing cars and light trucks to climb the ramps like mountain slopes. The proposal “Market-wall” organizes a patio with edged platforms around its limits, where the connections between the stalls is done by a perimeter corridor within a wall Despite its relative low height to neighboring homes, it is an architecture of strong presence.

The projects “H2 Core” and “Lightshadow” act on the same corner plot with a similar strategy: a crystal or illuminated close core with intense references to the context.

In short, we try to act into the city with mid-scale interventions under a program for young people to be able to transform a piece of Milan.

Acting in a corner, a square or a city passage with the same strategy cause by a great mid-morning coffee in that kiosk in front of the architectural school. Perhaps architecture, such as its explanation, must make students do not need more.

Urban Voids / 059

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060 / WS.C / Héctor Fernández Elorza

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Urban Voids / 061

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Atelier B Hèctor Fernandez Elorza Giancarlo Floridi Matteo Aimini Studenti: Federico Bordoni, Sacha Kanah, Andrea Manfredini, Federico Panella, Diana Ranghetti, Nadica FIlipovic, Laura Dedè, Nina Jakic, Federica Gusa, Ivan Moiseenko, Enisa Selmaj, Seyedhamidreza Serajy, Elisa Versari, Enrico Miglietta, Stepan Khmyz, Margherita Grechi, Teodora Koinova, Giorgia Crepaldi Liu Suyao, Federica Nani, Valentina Rao, Chao Zheng, Francesca Cosenza, Lilit Poghosyan, Anja Kunic, Liana Mandrazhieva, Gabriella Rossi, Benito Zanzico Ganlin Li, Kristina Mileska, Nikola Lik Man Jelenkovic

062 / WS.C/ Héctor Fernández Elorza

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Atelier B

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Hèctor Fernandez Elorza Giancarlo Floridi Matteo Aimini

1 CINEMA CRISTALLO CINEMA CRISTALLO Federico Bordoni Federico Bordoni, Sacha Kanah, Andrea Manfredini Sacha Kanah Andrea Manfredini

A strong U element defines the intervention’s border and a urban void. The projection’s rooms of the new cinema are floating inside it, acting like light refractors.

Urban Voids / 069

070 / WS.C / HĂŠctor FernĂĄndez Elorza

2 AT THE DRIVE IN

AT THE DRIVE IN Federico Panella, Diana Ranghetti A parallelepiped that hosts fixed shape functions frames the void and through its roof enables different activities around the covered plaza.

Federico Panella A controlled flexibility.

Nadia Ranghetti

Urban Voids / 071

072 / WS.C / Héctor Fernández Elorza

3 PLAT-PHANT PLAT-PHANT Nadica FIlipovic, Laura Dedè, Nina Jakic, Federica Gusa The three legs link the two surfaces which are public spaces, at the street level and at the skylineNadica level.FIlipovic The legs will be alive thanks to the Laura inside.

Dedè hostel Nina Jakic Federica Gusa

Urban Voids / 073

4

Hèctor Fernandez Elorza Giancarlo Floridi Matteo Aimini

074 / WS.C / Héctor Fernández Elorza

4 CO-WALL-INKS CO-WALL-INKS IvanSeyedhamidreza Moiseenko Ivan Moiseenko, Enisa Selmaj, Serajy, Elisa Versari Enisa Selmaj Seyedhamidreza Serajy Elisa Versari

The heavy wall constrains the empty corner of the plot. This is the order, the rightness, the classic urbanity. The light wireframe, white and almost invisible behind the wall, is a chaotic system which shows the complexity of life behind its visible simplicity.

Urban Voids / 075

5

Hèctor Fernandez Elorza Giancarlo Floridi Matteo Aimini

076 / WS.C / Héctor Fernández Elorza

5 SPORT CENTRE SPORT CENTRE Enrico Miglietta

Stepan Khmyz Enrico Miglietta, Stepan Khmyz, Margherita Grechi, Teodora Koinova Margherita Grechi Teodora Koinova

‘’It takes darkness to be aware of the light’.’

Urban Voids / 077

078 / WS.C / Héctor Fernández Elorza

6 MARKET WALL MARKET WALL Giorgia Crepaldi, Liu Suyao, Federica Nani, Valentina Rao A circumscribing wall creates the void, framing the sky, protecting people from the outside chaos. Our design begins with void.

Giorgia Crepaldi Liu Suyao Federica Nani Valentina Rao

Urban Voids / 079

080 / WS.C / Héctor Fernández Elorza

7 VERTICAL SQUARE

VERTICAL SQUARE Chao Zheng, Francesca Cosenza, Lilit Poghosyan The square is raised up and the street is ascending to create a new concept of public multifunctional space developed in height.

Chao Zheng Francesca Cosenza Lilit Poghosyan

Urban Voids / 081

082 / WS.C / Héctor Fernández Elorza

8

Anja Kunic, Liana Mandrazhieva, Gabriella Rossi A rough monolith cracked on theAnja inside, with a crystal shaped “core”, Kunic supplying the health center with water.

Liana Mandrazhieva Gabriella Rossi

Urban Voids / 083

084 / WS.C / Héctor Fernández Elorza

9 LIGHTSHADOW LIGHTSHADOW Benito Zanzico, Ganlin Li, Kristina Mileska, Nikola Lik Man Jelenkovic “Dark give me black eyes, I use them to find the light.

Benito Zanzico Ganlin Li Kristina Mileska Nikola Lik Man Jelenkovic

Cheng Gu

Urban Voids / 085

WS.D Helena Coch Roura*

with: Alessandro Rogora, Claudia Poggi Participants Iacopo Renoldi Arianna Garutti Cristina Brambilla Heidi Ponzoni Ombretta Colangelo Marta Agosti Ana Spiroska Thérese Chidiac Alice Coletta Ognjen Banovic Jeff Kunshi Petar Lazarov Pinar Ozbakir Nikola Rosic Vardan Serafimov Yimin Xu Lin Zhi

*Architect in 1988 at University of Catalunya UPC (Spain), Scho- ol of Architecture of Barcelona, where she obtained her PhD in 2003. She is Associate Professor of Environmental Control at UPC. She is responsible for the Master in “Architecture, Energy and En- vironment” and of the PhD Pro- gram related to this Master.

Her main research includes archi- tectural design and it relation with energy and environment, inclu- ding renewable energy and natural energy in architecture as dayligh- ting, thermal and acoustics in bu- ildings. In this field she operated as a professional architect as well as a consultant. futur.upc.edu/HelenaCochRoura

Save Feed Upcycle / 087

Save Feed Upcycle Feed the city Feed the city means to generate more cultivated areas in the ex macello site in order to produce a considerable amount of vegetables, fruits, poultry, eggs, fishes and mushrooms. More than just an agricultural area to feed the inhabitants, the site offers green spaces for the community , encouraging social activities that involve also the neighborhood. This approach aims also to re-connect the people’s daily experience with natural life cycles.

Finally, the introduction of such a project in the area will stimulate the urban agricultural sector, the permaculture and the activities related to food transformation.

Save the buildings The old dismissed buildings represent one of the problems in the transformation of urban areas. These existing buildings are big and out of scale for conventional, not industrial uses (e.g. residences). If we imagine new functions these buildings can be too small or too wide, too high or bad oriented to be reused; that’s why the demolition is the easiest response to solve the problem. We decided to adopt a more

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sustainable approach trying to minimize the demolitions and saving not only the buildings with an historical value, but reusing nearly all the existing ones.

We decided also to reuse locally the waste materials. The concept was to preserve all the existing buildings when possible in order to save the gray energy contained in the structures, reducing the costs. We demolished only two buildings to give more space to the agricultural production.

The saved buildings have been used to host the new activities and when needed they have been upgraded with the required improvements, technologies and plants. Among the preserved buildings there are the Liberty ones situated on the very important traffic route viale Molise, and the Gallery formerly used for the industrial (slaughter) activities that becomes the main architectural figure in the complex and maintains a central role in our project.

Upcycle your life “Upcycling is not simple recycling”, it represents a further step in the idea of buildings saving and restoration. Saving the buildings was the first step, but the process should go on to be “fully” sustainable. We planned to start an upcycling process to give the wasted objects a chance to have a new life and to be transformed into new elements of higher value. The production has been extended to everyday objects: pieces of paper, glass bottles, old bicycles, and old furniture that can be converted into new useful objects or pieces of art. As an example, the paper may become a fashion piece, while an old bicycle component may be transformed in the structure of a seat.

If we consider the economical aspect, all the planned activities (agriculture as well as the upcycling process) require a lot of energy, that’s why a large surface of PV panels for energy production as well as solar thermal panels for hot water have been installed on the roofs in order to satisfy most of the energy demand.

Furthermore, the entire complex, as a community center, becomes also a space for learning, relaxing and shopping.

The center is open to the visitors, not just to show the products, but also as a way to give people the opportunity to learn the agriculture and upcycling processes.

In this sense, the project triggers a process that can produce a deep

Save Feed Upcycle / 089

transformation in the city that can slowly modify the society habits.

Specifically, this area can host various activities as exhibitions, shops, laboratories and events like fashion or design weeks, food market etc.

Restaurants, cafes and shops, as well as greeneries and squares, are designed as important commercial and leisure elements of the new “exmacello”.

Future implementation steps could assume the transformation of the areas that today host the flower market and the poultry market.

These huge areas could be transformed into a productive, urban agricultural factory, significantly increasing the food production and thus reducing the city’s dependence on fresh vegetable import. Of course it will not be enough to feed Milan, but new hypothesis and experimentations should be carried out to deeply reconsider the urban structure towards a more sustainable environment.

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Historical photos of ex slaughter

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DAY 1

DAY 2

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DAY 3

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Population of the city of Milan has grown to reach more than 1.35 million in 2014. ‘Feed the city’ aims to generate more cultivated spaces in the ex-macello site in order to produce a considerable quantity of vegetables, fruits, poultry, fishes, eggs and mashrooms.

The introduction of such a project in the area will stimulate the agricultural sector to keep developing and feeding the city.

Model of the building converted to poultry and fish farming

Building for poultry farming - bioclimatic functioning

Save Feed Upcycle / 093

Concept The main concept is green & sustainability that in this case means to make a design that takes into account the circular symbiosis between organisms and between activities where the output of one process is used as an input of another one. The compost, as well as the feces of animals (poultry), are used to grow plants, while the water of the fish farming is used for irrigation.

Green roofplan

Floorplan

Technology The grass roof: prevents overheating and reduce the CO2 as well as the dust, reduces the rainwater peaks and purifies the rainwater. The rainwater is stored and used for irrigation and not drinking uses.

The use of the solar radiation is intensive both for energy production (using PV panels integrated in the architecture), as well as for food production.

On the roof are located some greenhouses for vegetable production, while at the lower levels the pools for fish production benefit of direct radiation (through windows and patios), while in the underground are located the mushrooms that need almost no radiation.

System of rainwater purification

094 /WS.D / Helena Coch Roura

The aim is to preserve the existing structures and to revitalize the interiors with noninvasive actions. The liberty buildings are redesigned only in the internal layout in order to host new functions. The gallery, instead, is restored, redesigning the envelope: new glazed boxes are added on the south side taking advantage of the solar exposure to collect solar gain in winter. The adoption of bioclimatic strategies favoured the introduction of activities as a library and a restaurant with a important social role.

Winter functioning

Library inside the reconverted gallery

Summer functioning

Save Feed Upcycle / 095

Model of the gallery

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It is easy to demolish an old building to build a new one. This is the conventional approach but it does not consider the energy and materials consumed in this process.

The ex - macello in our minds becomes the place of upcycling. Not recycling but upcycling it. New use is given to a piece of paper, used glass, old bicycle or old furniture etc.. The new usable products, like hanger made of old bicycle or piece of fashion made of paper and plastic, are made here.

Design strategies specific to this climate: 1. Glazing should minimize conductive loss and gain (minimize U-factor) because undesired radiation gain or loss has less impact in this climate.

2. Sunny wind-protected outdoor spaces can extend living areas in cool weather.

3. Organize floorplan so winter sun penetrates into daytime use spaces with specific functions that coincide with solar orientation.

Bioclimatic diagram

Solar analysis

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Functional layout Different functions are located in the existing buildings, everyone concerning with the upcycle activity

Final exhibition

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Miaw ‘Section C’ team

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WS.E

Renato D’Alençon Castrillón*

with: Andrea Gritti, Marco Bovati e Franco Tagliabue

*

Renato D’Alençon Castrillón is School of Architecture of the P. Universidad Católica de Chi- le, and M. Arch. graduated from Cornell University. He was awar- ded a Fulbright Grant from 2002 to 2004 to pursue his Master’s, and a Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst Grant to pursue a PhD Degree in the Technische Universität Berlin, starting 2009. He has taught Design Studios and Building Technology at the Uni- versidad Católica de Chile in the areas of architectural design and building technology. He has been Guest Faculty at the University of Chile and the Technical University of Berlin, where he currently is ap- pointed as lecturer and senior re- searcher and teaches design studios and research seminars.

His field of scholarly work includes environmental design and perfor- mance of buildings, area where he published the book “Acondiciona- mientos” (Ediciones ARQ, Santia- go 2008) and several articles; and other publications product of his research in the field of construc- tion history and of the project Re- claiming Heritage www.reclaimin- gheritage. org.

At the same time, he has practiced architecture since 1997 in D’A- lençon - Plaza - Rosso Architects and later independently, with nu- merous works in various areas such as public facilities and has earned awards in national and internatio- nal competitions. His built work has been published in professional and academic media.

Working in rubble designing the between state / 101

Working in rubble designing the between state

In different contexts, urban continuity and change take on specific, sometimes dramatic meanings.

In spite of these, architects and urban designers cannot overlook the transformative potential of the city. The “continuous metamorphosis� needs to be understood for specific locations and mastered towards inducing a positive transformation.

In brownfield sites, rubble and debris are constantly produced. Why not reuse them as the main material for the creation of new public spaces at minimum waste? This would be a way to give a concrete response to the negative effects of urban abandonment.

The main problem addressed by the Workshop was to explore the re-use of building materials and urban elements in this specific context, underlining the economy of resources and architectural values of building with them, as opposed to a reconstruction based on new, more expensive materials.

The interventions for the generation of public spaces on the edge of abandoned urban places may have other important effects:

102 / WS.E / Renato D’Alençon Castrillón

a) demonstrating that the community take care of the places directly; b) guiding future choices of recovery through the example of innovative spatial practices; c) producing effective interventions in low-cost/high-quality, knowing that resources for massive interventions of rehabilitation of brownfield sites are limited.

The work was focused on the identification of these problems and the exploration of the potentials they propose by means of urban regeneration strategies leading to specific scenarios over time. The elaboration of the strategies and the support they propose for the development of the city is based on the recognition of the urban qualities of the site and on their possible spatial implementations.

The Ex-Macello (former slaughterhouse) area is a 12 ha. urban enclosure. It is placed south to the Porta Vittoria railway “Passante”.

The settlement has a facade that faces the city along the Viale Molise where there are few Art Nouveau buildings (Palazzine Liberty); the other sides are delimited by the streets Lombroso and Monte Ortigara. The total perimeter is approximately 1,200 meters.

The slaughterhouse has been built from 1912 to 1924, the buildings have remained in use until the early nineties, when it started the dismissing process which ended in 2005.

This process has resulted in the abandonment of almost all of the buildings and structures contained in the area, for a total of approximately 400,000 cubic meters of built-up volume.

The Real Estate failure caused by economical default reveal a deep question: could private high finance determine the future of the cities by way of complete urban projects?

In the same time the city lies in lack of investors and the decline damages urban area of de-industrialization.

The safety measures costing in this way ties with maintenance and social costs of neglect.

Who takes care of the city?

Social actions, events, retail market and artisan business in the between time create the condition for multiple stakeholders of the future.

What takes care of whom?

The area is aimed to transform the surroundings getting back facilities to the population.

Working in rubble designing the between state / 103

Which will the new configurations be in order to the choices that we are doing today?

The support embodies an ever-growing process and it would merge with the mutations of the state of economical and social conditions.

Evolution itself will determine the advantages and interests of the proposal, accepting or refusing the options that it offer.

The support, foreshadows scenarios, drafts functions and grows and develops involving citizen and different investors.

A kind of “Foundation act� for an uncertain future, opened to different possibilities.

Moreover, identifies the great symbolic and regenerating value of rubbles and debris, as well as its general meanings of safe-money procedure of reconstruction.

To work on the edge means to protect the areas not yet recovered, producing a new relationship with the city. The progressive growth of its physical body or his negative gradually fills the space introducing quality, liveability and functions.

To depict the gallery counts as an acknowledgement of an element, trace or building, able to order the development.

To reaffirm the fields is a way to underline the relations with the city and urban tissue.

Borders, Fields and Gallery aren’t defined and complete projects but a sort of open shape.

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Connecting hub Phases of work

The gallery

Reuse Debris

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This strategy exploits an existing building to solve problems reusing the debris to define new borders and shape the space of the area. The Gallery becomes a connecting hub not only for the area but also for the neighbourhood and the city.

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Sequences GALLERY-Sequences AREA

EVOLUTION

2015

STRATEGIES

Reactivating the buildings

2017

2020

2024

Working in rubble designing the between state / 107

Gallery sequences propose to create an inner park,using old building’s rubble and reactivating the gallery to prepare the area for a different future willing to receive public or private investors.

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Nature rebirth EXISTING SITUATION | area ex-Macello

SUPPORT | nature expansion vegetation protecting buildings

eco-system within ruin

street cracks as a connection

STRATEGY | fields

playgrounds and paths

involve the community

remove asphalt

generation of debris

reuse

Gilles Clément, The third landscape

rubbles

create facilities

preserve buildings

Gilles Clément, natural exchange between the third landscape and the artificial one

Working in rubble designing the between state / 109

Our strategy creates layers of fields that work on the existing surfaces trying to establish relations inside the area and outside, with the city. The support lets the nature expand within asphalt “cracks�and generates a third landscape.

SCENARIO | the third landscape

CREATO CON LA VERSIONE DIDATTICA DI UN PRODOTTO AUTODESK

Net of flows

CREATO CON LA VERSIONE DIDATTICA DI UN PRODOTTO AUTODESK

CREATO CON LA VERSIONE DIDATTICA DI UN PRODOTTO AUTODESK

110 / WS.E / Renato D’Alençon Castrillón

CREATO CON LA VERSIONE DIDATTICA DI UN PRODOTTO AUTODESK

CREATO CON LA VERSIONE DIDATTICA DI UN PRODOTTO AUTODESK

CREATO CON LA VERSIONE DIDATTICA DI UN PRODOTTO AUTODESK

CREATO CON LA VERSIONE DIDATTICA DI UN PRODOTTO AUTODESK

CREATO CON LA VERSIONE DIDATTICA DI UN PRODOTTO AUTODESK

CREATO CON LA VERSIONE DIDATTICA DI UN PRODOTTO AUTODESK

CREATO CON LA VERSIONE DIDATTICA DI UN PRODOTTO AUTODESK

CREATO CON LA VERSIONE DIDATTICA DI UN PRODOTTO AUTODESK

CREATO CON LA VERSIONE DIDATTICA DI UN PRODOTTO AUTODESK

Working in rubble designing the between state / 111

Net of flows linked to the existing paths goes into the dismissed area in order to generate people interest and the beginning of improvement, using the preexistence and rubbles resulted from the demolition of the old buildings.

112 / WS.E / Renato D’Alençon Castrillón

Lymph CONCEPT 1. Border’s marginalisation

THE STRATEGY

2. Open the border

3. New path

THE SCENARIO 4. Let life expand

4. Social life calls investors

RECYCLING DEBRIS Demolish the run down buildings

Build the new border with the debris

Build the new path: all the debris are reused

Working in rubble designing the between state / 113

A new vital lymph from two actions: new borders and a new above-ground path built with debris. This path is the matrix of new public spaces nearby the border: an interface between the city and the area.

THE STRATEGY

THE SCENARIO

114 / WS.E / Renato D’Alençon Castrillón

Stain of chain

Working in rubble designing the between state / 115

Stain of Chain: sees all this empty spaces as containers, ready to be given to the people, be shared and used in a new way, without needing to attend great investments from the public or the private sphere.

WS.F Roelof Verhage*

with: Corinna Morandi, Lina Scavuzzo and Mario Paris Participants Jacopo Ascari Federica Benedetti Silvia Maria Caser Spolaor Francesco Castelli Heidi Corti Dorota Agata Kotz Freeda Jane Madius Fiorella Nataly Medina Zambrano Michele Nuzzolese Mario Sgargi Xuezhu Sun Giulia Temin Maria Vassileva Leila Zamperoni

*

Roelof Verhage is lecturer in urban planning and development and director of the Institut d’Urbanisme de Lyon – Université Lumière Lyon 2. He is member of the research institute CNRS UMR 5206 Triangle. He has conducted applied and more fundamental research projects in France and the Netherlands, for the account of ministries, local authorities and research councils, and has published on these topics in English, Dutch and French professional and scientifc journals and books.

Opening an enclosure / 117

Opening an enclosure

Placemaking exercises

The ex-Macello site is the result of the summing up of two regular rectangular areas, separated by an east-west heavy traffic road. The two areas (132.00 mq) are now surrounded by a continuous wall, interrupted only by the transparent fences which connect the Liberty buildings along viale Molise. The characters of the site are related to the condition of enclosure of the area, due to the destination of slaughterhouse and wholesale food market, activities dismantled since the ninenties, which have caused the almost complete abandonment of the buildings realized during the decades from 1912 following an orthogonal grid. A common goal of the workshop activities has been to re-create a new urban neighbourhood able to darn the compact fabric at the western border, the new developments at north related to the European Library program and, on the eastern side, the huge monofunctional precinct of the Ortomercato, waiting for future transformation. A general approach was followed, referred to the idea of placemaking, focusing on the role and features of the public realm involving planning, design, management and programming tools in its definition and enhancement.

The expected outcome of the workshop was not the definition of a masterplan, due to the current condition of uncertainty of several elements and to a methodological approach which focuses on the exploration of alternative solutions which try to keep in account the

118 / WS.F / Roelof Verhage

different expectations of the public and private actors which could be involved in the transformation, the time that it could take and the need to forecast the phases of implementation of the program of rehabilitation of the site. A framework of common guidelines was defined: restauration of the Liberty buildings and of the Galleria; opening the wall to enhance the integration of the new fabric in the existing urban settlement; realization of a significant (for size and morphology) green open space as a part of the system of parks and gardens of the eastern sector of the city; providing a good amount of different typologies of public housing; necessity to establish a program of implementation by phases.

Three alternatives of conceptual layout have been proposed, exploiting different focus, such as the creation of public and private functions and facilities able to create a new vibrant and lively fabric (FEEDING THE NEIGHBOURHOOD); the answer to the demand of facilities for the Universities and high level education institutions which are a prominent resource for the city of Milan (CAMPO/US); the relation with Expo 2015, by means of the “foretaste” of small scale but significant reuse of part the site in coincidence with the exhibition, in the perspective of future transformations which could represent its legacy around the city (LEA(I) VING EXPO).

Coming from very different backgrounds, is for sure one of the most relevant results of such a short but intense experience.

Just to quote some of the students projects, Tran Guang Hieu has developed a mobile and fluide device on the given façade layout of Caccia Dominioni with parametric variable stripes, Arian Heidari Afshari has conceived a shift of planes that comes in an original set of balconies and box flowers, that also considers lighting control and interior/exterior relationship, Andrea Rossi “re-appropriate” an element of the tradition of Milanese and the italian palaces that is the “bugnato”(rustication).

This modular element, traditionally associated with ideas of stability and strength, has been re-thought to fit the needs of modern building, such as customization and complexity; this has been possible due to the differentiation of the basic square, that can change in depth and in function, creating a sort of “plug-in facade”, adaptable in every moment to the will of its inhabitants. Finally another examples is Maddalena Boatto who made slits in the wall in such a way that it would be easy to be experience the space in different ways: by changing the angles of the openings, by changing the dimensions of the wall and its angle, to create a play of light.

Opening an enclosure / 119

120 / WS.F / Roelof Verhage

Opening an enclosure / 121

feeding the neighborhood

the project intends to rehabilitate the site of the ex-macello as a new active core for the area, envisioning a future where families can go to work by foot, by fresh food directly close to their home and enjoy services, entertainment and green spaces. A new heart for a shared life preserving the abandoned building maintains and retains part of the history of the site, giving it unique image.

lea(i)vExpo

the project, based on 5 different concepts, aims to create an “open green” platform where the theme and the elements of Expo 2015 will be explored also in the post event years. Organized along the “Diagonal”, connection between the transportation and the public centre, ex Macello area will host a bussines park, social housing and a big Science food students’ village, where the young scientists can make research and show to everybody their results. Core of the area will be a big green space, where the most beautiful Expo pavillions have their “Milanese accomodation” once the event will end. The best way to make the message “feeding the planet, energy for life” live.

campo/us

The idea behind our project CAMPO/US is to create a series of residences and common spaces for students, workers and residents in the area of Ex-Macello in Milan.

We have chosen to create a campus that is accessible to almost all universities in the city by public transportation and mainly by the Passante railway connection.

Also, we would like to relate to the cultural value of the site - CAMPO or food production by creating a central common park space, which could host leisure activities, agricultural experience and in the same time improve the bike network in the neighbourhood.

Large scale commerce we are shortining the length of the food chain by giving a more direct supply to locals generate a traffic flow of the trucks

STUDENT HOUSING

122 / WS.F / Roelof Verhage

WHAT?

feeding the neighborhood SOCIAL HOUSING

NEW PRIVATE INVESTMENT

WHY?

STUDENT HOUSING

Social gaps created social differences social different creating by different by different typologies of building and and also by theby the typologies of building also proximity to the periphery proximity to the periphery.

WHAT?

the accessibility genconnectivity erating by the existingby the existing the accessibility generating public transport and public transport and the continuity by the the continuity of the green system, are the main points for the green system, are the potential of the this area key factors of the public investment

SOCIAL HOUSING

STUDENT HOUSING

PRIVATE HOUSING

potential of this area SOCIAL HOUSING

NEW PRIVATE INVESTMENT

Social gaps

NEW PRIVATE INVESTMENT

Social gaps social different creating by different typologies of building and also by the Large scale proximity to thecommerce periphery. we are shortining the length of the food chain by giving a more direct supply to locals generate a tracfic flow of the trucks

services provided by joint venture of public and private investments

development of the project

around the area there are many good local facilities. There are some interesting public places connected by a green corridor

WHAT?HOW? public investment

private investment

SOCIAL HOUSING

sense of local community

housing project connectivity the new private and social housing are meant to be together, mixed becose the accessibility generating by the existing of the same public areas and services the n public transport and the continuity by the are mea greenServices system, are the main points for the of the potential of the this area

scale commerce commerce LargeLarge scale we are shortining the length of the food chain by giving a more supply toof locals we are shortining thedirect length the food generate a traffic flow of the trucks chain by giving a more direct supply to locals generate a traffic flow of the trucks

WHAT?

se by join and p

Connectivity

WHY?

Social gaps social different creating by different typologies of building and also by the proximity to the periphery.

H

private investment

SOCIAL HOUSING

PRIVATE HOUSING

Housing projects

services provided by joint venture of public and private investments

JOBS

(co-working and spaces for rent)

MARKET

(direct commerce)

SERVICES

(for the whole family)

direct commerce we see the new covered market (inside the ex-macello) as a living heart for the daily life of the area

services around the area there are many good local facilities. There are some interesting places for the public use connected by the green corridor

Slow connections

services Large scale commerce slow connections connectivity housing project new private and around the area there are many good local green we we are shortining the length ofthethe foodgenerating the green spaces is a safe spaceare in the center, that accessibility the existing the newby private and social housing fferent social housing is well connected towards the outside on public transport and the continuity by the located in the center are meant to be together, mixed becose by the facilities.

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the food ly to locals rucks

development of the project

sense of local community

LIVING THE NEIGHBORHOOD WITH SLOW, PLEASANT AND SAFE CONNECTIONS

area

Direct commerce

connectivity the accessibility generating by the existing services direct commerce new covered market around the area there aresee many local market we thegood new covered public transport and the continuity by the facilities. There(inside are some theinteresting ex-macello) as a living heart (inside the ex-macelplaces for the public use connected for the daily life of the area green system, are the main points for the by the corridor lo)green is the living heart potential of forthe thethis dailyarea life of JOBS

(co-working and spaces for rent)

MARKET

(direct commerce)

SERVICES

(for the whole family)

the area

Local services SOCIAL SERVICES FOR THE LOCAL COMMUNITY AND ENTERTAINMENT FOR A BROADER PUBLIC

local services the liberty houses are true gate with the neighbourhood offering leisure, culture and entertainment that actract people inside

Palazzine liberty as a gate and container of the services for the area

Opening an enclosure / 123

LIVING THE NEIGHBORHOOD WITH SLOW, PLEASANT AND SAFE CONNECTIONS

slow connections the green is a safe space in the center, that is well connected towards the outside on the main diagonal axes

SOCIAL SERVICES FOR THE LOCAL COMMUNITY AND ENTERTAINMENT FOR A BROADER PUBLIC

local services the liberty houses are true gate with the neighbourhood offering leisure, culture and entertainment that actract people inside

HOW?

124 / WS.F / Roelof Verhage

lea(i)vExpo

ANALYSIS AND CONNECTION

PHASE 2 - 2020

PHASE 3 - 2030

Opening an enclosure / 125

BUSINESS DISTRICT

FOOD MARKET

SOCIAL HOUSING

STUDENT VILLAGE

MAIN GATE

126 / WS.F / Roelof Verhage

Opening an enclosure / 127

DWS.01

Michael Schwarting* and Giovanni Santamaria** with Antonella Contin, Alessandro Frigerio, Michele Moreno, Haitham Nabil Participants Kenneth Almario Deborah Andreani Francesco Balsarini Ksenia Bisti Franz Bittenbinder Pietro Bergamini Elisa Bosi Elena Casini Laura Chignoli Domiziana Cristini Giovanni Damoli Martina De Pascalis Clara Donati Heba Elganish Stefano Evangelista Alberto Giacopelli Letizia Giovannini Andrea Govi Louis Guallpa Lorenzo Grecchi Ankita Gupta Vanashree Kamani Guliz Uslu Jair Herrera Galvan

Chiara Lucchisani Valentina Manente Matteo Marchese Ismar Medunjanin Lorenzo Mirante Marco Morselli Bogdan Peric Olimpia Rangoni Machiavelli Lorena Navarro Elisabetta Rubini Marta Scaccabarozzi Giulia Scotti Valentina Smirenina Alessandro Tatti Vito Taverna Gina Touchan Rhoda Tsado Russne Valiusaitye Alex Vaysse Marcus Wilford

*

Michael Schwarting is an architect, urban designer and professor, He taught at Columbia, Yale, Penn, Cornell, Cooper Union, Syracuse and he has widely published about architecture and architectural theory. Now he’s Professor of Architecture at NYIT.

**

Giovanni Santamaria is an italian architect and professor (MSc at IUAV and PhD at Politecnico di Milano). He is the co-creator of the InterÂŹnational Exchange Program with New York Institute of Technology, where he now teaches...

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Rubattino

History and Prophecy

Introduction The MIAW workshop has been a great occasion to share and compare methodologies and visions. In particular, the presence of the proff.

Schwarting and Santamaria from the NYIT has given the possibility to rethink about our position in relation to the typo-morphological approach to the metropolitan city. Prof. Schwarting helped us in understanding how to work sensitively inside the urban city fabric linking together the history and the prophecy (Colin Rowe speaking). I can say that he “moved from USA to Europe”.. Prof. Santamaria viceversa, has tried to insert into the European urban analysis and project tradition new contents related to sustainability and environmental issues: from Europe to USA trying to focus on a human being network of urban patterns at different scales.

Facing the challenge of the program Riformare Milano, “Misura e Scala” Research Lab of the Dastu Department, under the direction of prof. Michele Moreno and the tutorship of arch. Alessandro Frigerio, Phd’s candidate and arch. Haitam Nabil, tried to reactivate Palladio’s experience about the urban regeneration: transforming the city not to renovate the entire city fabric, but just few key points within it, through the rethinking of their footprints within an ideal networked urban pattern able to conceive the city at a different scale.

We have chosen the area of Caserma Rubattino and decided to consider it as one among the big containers that are spread into the Milan city fabric. Heterotopia, Urban morph-type, Mega form, the Rubattino barrack has to be re-shaped as layer system, inner landscape and landmark at metropolitan scale.

Antonella Contin

130 / DWS.01 / Michael Schwarting - Giovanni Santamaria

The site The site given by MIAW, is a mega-block, built for manufacturing the Innocenti automobile and then occupied by the military until today. This mega-block is situated on the edge of the city that is defined by the 20th century transportation infrastructure ring of rail tracks and highway.

This ring must be seen in relation to the older medieval and 18th century rings that have been transformed from walls to transportation infrastructure. This new ring is a modern wall. The old city inside the wall has punctured it and penetrated the old landscape of small towns, agriculture and later constellations of industry. Thus, we have a heterogeneous mix of extended urbanism, new sub-urbanism, remnants of small towns (now incorporated into Milano), occupied, transformed or abandoned farm land and industrial buildings. There is also the ancient Lambro River, flowing from the mountains to the plain, vying for its existence next to the highway. What will be the identity of this area in the re-formation? The site is between the old small towns of Lambrate to the north and Ortica to the south. It is surrounded by diverse activities; old industrial fabric that is being re-purposed on the west side, a residential enclave to the south, a church with school, Polytecnico dormitories and a public theatre on the east and a vacant site with proposed plan (that could be modified) to the north. Adjacent is a new high density residential enclave with a contemporary/plaza-shopping center, and pedestrian connection to the Lambro River that is bracketed with new parks. Along the river is the spatially powerful columned space under the Tangenziale. Beyond the Lambro is the equally powerful industrial archeology of the abandoned Innocenti factory buildings.

The block and the building The mega-block site is about 380 meters by 230 meters. The building, a factory for the Innocenti automobile from the 60’s to the 90’s, and taken over by the military in WWII is about 280 meter long with 4 bays totalling about 120 meters and about 15 meters high. It is a steel longspan truss structure. Three conical bunkers with internal spiral ramps are connected underground to each other and the main building. There are other out buildings that could be dismissed.

The problem The work-shop studio focused on the Rubattino site of the automobile factory/military site and its relationship to the different scales of the surrounding context from the regional to the urban and local architectural city block and buildings. At the regional scale the study considered the sites location in relation to the historical city of central

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Milano, its 19th small towns, agricultural farms and industrial compounds as well as suburban, new settlement growth. The infrastructure of raised rail tracks and highway had to be considered and confronted. The issue of the edge of the city, how it was solved in the past and what are the new problems and possibilities. The problem poses the following questions: What is the potential role of the mega-block in its context?

How to deal with the existing giant scale mega-block in relation to human scale? What to do about or with the existing perimeter military wall?

What to do with the existing factory building – keep or remove? How to use the existing factory building in relation to the existing social context or the regional context or both? What is the role and possible meaning of the bunkers? The issues of urban ecology and sustainability must be considered a pressing issues. How do we as architects understand, research and collaborate to address these complex issues in both visual and real ways to contribute to the urban environment? Finally, how do we use this work-shop and project to investigate the issue of re-forming Milano – re forming the city in the 21st century edge, and the exterior remnants of older century?

STRUCTURE OF THE WORK-SHOP Students from the Scuola di Architettura e Società’ of Politecnico di Milano and from the School of Architecture and Design of NYIT worked in teams to elaborate design proposals for the area of Caserma

132 / DWS.01 / Michael Schwarting - Giovanni Santamaria

Rubattino. Sixteen different “points of view” emerged during the 10 intense days of workshop, from discussions and design explorations which identified three main approaches or design strategies: Infill (Riempimento), Wall (Recinto), Garden (Disegno di Suolo).

The “Infill” strategy tried to define ways to create density through systems of built form and space in a dynamic continuity with the existing urban fabric or introducing new elements composed in the field left open by the demolition of parts of the existing built fabric. The “Wall” strategy rethinks and transforms the idea of gate or threshold into a more permeable and performable one. Ins most cases the wall is more metaphorical or symbolic, where dimension, posture and rhythm are able to establish new relationships with the surrounding, seeing the friction between inside and outside. The “Garden” strategy is oriented towards new ways of manipulating the ground, creating recreational, restorative and productive landscapes with an approach that involves and reactivates local as well as regional scales.

Some projects involve two or all of these strategies with differing hierarchical importance. They all were able to explore and verify issues and potentialities of the selected site in relation to three main dimensional scales: Local, Urban, Metropolitan.

This was achieved through a process of observation, recording and critical analysis of the characteristics of the context, including issues of connection, program distribution and the complexity of the environmental systems have been considered an important starting point for a proactive understanding and reformulation of the site. Each design proposal explored experimental and integrative approaches to activate and verify possible scenarios for the future of this neighborhood in a perspective of meaningful connectivity both physical and strategic to the bigger surrounding. The system of actions and reactions introduced by the design proposals making a specific strategy of intervention which, starting from the real conditions, also led to a possible abstract and provocatively paradigmatic The design proposals for Rubattino thus became an opportunity to explore and discuss issues related to similar sites diffused within our cities.

Conclusion Re-forming the city has been a preoccupation since the Renaissance Citta Ideale. There was some success in the 19th century with Haussmann’s Paris and Cerda’s Barcelona. There were good intentions for reform and re-form in the 20th century with C.I.A.M. and Team X, but little success in forming a modern city. Now we have found deep seated problems of urban ecology that we have created during the last century

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that must be solved. So again we must consider re-forming the city.

Rubattino provided a good place to test new ideas. The Project provokes some important general questions: - How does architecture and urban design interact in terms of the local context? How does the local interact with the larger scales? Is a ‘metal map’ achievable at multiple scales and how can it be represented? What image, sign/shape, or form/signal?

- How do we consider and work with neglected architecture and urban space, the built and the natural heritage, and give them new meaning?

How can this achieve well-being/livability and the attractiveness of the place in relation to its history, geography, potential and new objectives.

- How will the awareness of cultural heritage change over time? How culture and a sustainable heritage can be fundamental to conceiving a liveable metropolis with its visible, conscious and unconscious aspects?

- Thus we must learn how to integrate a sensitivity towards natural ground and environment into our architectural, landscape and urban projects; a new PAESAGGIO as reality built on a strong connection between the green/blue/grey infrastructures.

134 / DWS.01 / Michael Schwarting - Giovanni Santamaria

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DWS.02

Sebastiano Brandolini, Nicolas Gilsoul and Gunther Vogt * with: Antonio Longo , Alessandro Rocca, Talita Medina

Participants Agnese Bavuso Marone Francesca Bettetini Sahsena Bildirici Gaia Dal Cero Valentina Guido Simone Manni Napasorn Opassuksatit Leonardo Ronchi Federica Signoretti Li Xiao Yue

*

Gunter Vogt. Background in gardening, studied in Bern Landscape Architecture and works in partnership with Dieter Kienast since 2000. As a designer, he has worked all over the world and has offices on Zurich, Berlin and London. As professor, he has courses at ETH Zurich since year 2008 and was a guest professor at Harvard Graduate School of Design on year 2012.

Nicolas Gilsoul. Grand Prix of Rome. Architect, PHD Science and Landscape designer, he is founder and president of his office on Paris. Since 1996 his works had have many international awards. He is professour at Beaux Arts of Brussels and at Ecole Nationale SupĂŠrieure du Paysage of Versailles.

Sebastiano Brandolini. After graduated from Architectural Association of London, works as project designer, researcher and disciplinary critic. He was editor of Casabella between years 1984 to 1996. As a professor, works to UniversitĂ di Architettura on Florence and ETH Zurich.

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Lambroscapes Hiddenscapes

Business time or re appropriation of real value In the wide Milan metropolitan region the Lambro valley is the last corridor of naturality and open spaces in the constructed body of the city.

The river represents a problematic environment where different habitat, landscapes and infrastructures meet generating a peculiar kind of order.

The geology of the river, deal both with the idraulic risk and with the opportunity to recover a system of naturality, ecological connections, productive landscapes and public parks.

Thats is also a possible vision for the post Expo city, realistic and near to the needs of the citizens. A city of water, where the rivers can breath, is a city of the everyday quality of life.

We belong to a romantic generation but we have to know that the rivers are dangerous places.

Therefore the challenge is to start from the hope and utopia of a new, better and possible future lanscape.

Walking along the river and drawing his possible future, we try to reverse the destiny of Lambro as a forgotÂŹten landscape into a new center of natural/urbanity: attractor of social activities, using the full potential that every natural element, as a river is, to develop an urban and suburban territory.

168 / DWS.02 / Sebastiano Brandolini, Nicolas Gilsoul And Gunther Vogt

ANTONIO LONGO Lambroscape _ Kickoff letter We would like to use a simple method that is based on the direct reaction to the evidence of the landscape and reduce, if possible eliminate, some filters: images of famous landscapes, references from journals, anxiety to respond socially positive, forms and technologies practiced in previous projects. Stay in the landscape, suspending judgments and then try to imagine possible futures: to do it we will walk a lot and take the necessary time. We will also have to return to “old” hand-draw, which obliges us to be rapid, selective, working with an economy of means and intentions.

We cannot understand a landscape if we don’t walk in the landscape.

We know that the rivers are dangerous places, but as illuminists explorers we have to put in a positive outlook this image and to accommodate ourselves, even in the picturesque, at least for a while.

We will use a notebook for sketches, good pencil, some colours, camera, smartphone or tablet, hiking shoes and suitable clothing in case of rain. The aim is to face the landscape project in a complicated environment in which the river is denied to the city, also hidden but in some places surprisingly natural and scenically intact.

We will try to imagine possible futures for the Lambro Milanese in its different parts: from the evidence of the individual point of view, at eye level, detected through drawings on notebook, photos or annotations.

Obviously, this is just a point of access and a tool. Just for once, we’d like to try to reverse a common way of doing, going back to the roots of the landscape project.

It’s a process of contextual knowledge, patient, long and potentially endless: some great landscape painters of the past have worked in this way with the physical reality of the landscape, building and editing it constantly or following with wit its natural evolution.

How and when do we stop? We will decide it together, with our discussant: the aim is build a guide to the future of the Lambro. We will have to take special care in the drawings and to be careful observers: for it with Alessandro Rocca we started taking as a reference the famous Red Books of Humphry Repton ... So Lambro Red Books or Lambro Gardens? We will discuss it with Nicolas Gilsoul and Gunter Vogt.

Sebastiano Brandolini will guide us during these ten days to the project, beginning at our surveys along the river.

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Surveys along the river

1- We started our survey visiting the hills of Parco di San Maurizio. Only from the top we can see the sorroudings and from there we realize how close the abandoned Falck area is. Here the river runs enclosed in between the artificial hills (made with the polluted soil from Falck industry) and the Tangenziale Est.

2- The second survey started in a peripheric residential area of Milan.

Crossing the existent bridge we arrive on an agricultural field, limited by a small canal and the Tangenziale Est. On the other side of the river, the residents maintain an area of illegal urban gardens.

Walking toward south we finally arrive at Parco Lambro, a park divided by the river.

3- We finally ended up our survey walking from Grande Forlanini up to Ponte Lambro neighborhood. Here the river is mostly unaccessable and hidden behind the 2 meters high banks (made to protect the area from the floods of Lambro.

Some small canals irrigate this part of the city where we find illegal urban gardens, agricultural fields, big mobilty infrastructures and open park fields.

Schematic plan of our surveys 1 - San Maurizio al Lambro 2 - Cascina Gobba to Parco Lambro 3 - Parco Forlanini to Ponte Lambro

170 / DWS.02 / Sebastiano Brandolini, Nicolas Gilsoul And Gunther Vogt

Lambroscape Hiddenscape MIAW workshop Politecnico di Milano 2014

5

Lambroscape Hiddenscape MIAW workshop Politecnico di Milano 2014

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Lambroscape Hiddenscape MIAW workshop Politecnico di Milano 2014

Lambroscape Hiddenscape MIAW workshop Politecnico di Milano 2014

172 / DWS.02 / Sebastiano Brandolini, Nicolas Gilsoul And Gunther Vogt

Lambroscape Hiddenscape MIAW workshop Politecnico di Milano 2014

Lambroscape Hiddenscape MIAW workshop Politecnico di Milano 2014

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Lambroscape Hiddenscape MIAW workshop Politecnico di Milano 2014

Lambroscape Hiddenscape MIAW workshop Politecnico di Milano 2014

174 / DWS.02 / Sebastiano Brandolini, Nicolas Gilsoul And Gunther Vogt

Lambroscape Hiddenscape MIAW workshop Politecnico di Milano 2014

Lambroscape Hiddenscape MIAW workshop Politecnico di Milano 2014

Lambroscapes Hiddenscapes / 175

Lambroscape Hiddenscape MIAW workshop Politecnico di Milano 2014

Lambroscape Hiddenscape MIAW workshop Politecnico di Milano 2014

176 / DWS.02 / Sebastiano Brandolini, Nicolas Gilsoul And Gunther Vogt

Lambroscape Hiddenscape MIAW workshop Politecnico di Milano 2014

Lambroscape Hiddenscape MIAW workshop Politecnico di Milano 2014

Lambroscapes Hiddenscapes / 177

Lambroscape Hiddenscape MIAW workshop Politecnico di Milano 2014

Lambroscape Hiddenscape MIAW workshop Politecnico di Milano 2014

178 / DWS.02 / Sebastiano Brandolini, Nicolas Gilsoul And Gunther Vogt

SEBASTIANO BRANDOLINI Lambro As rivers Olona and Seveso, and as Naviglio Grande, Naviglio Pavese or Canal of Martesana, the Lambro belongs to the center of Milan. This is not only a thesis as it could be twenty years ago, now is an irrefutable fact. The proof is provided by any map of the metropolitan area of Milan: we cross it and we pass along the Lambro in so many points and so many times, perhaps more often without realizing it, that we can allow ourselves to not greet him anymore: going to the airport Linate, travelling along the Tangenziale Est, when we are in the neighborhoods of Monza or Melegnano. If we build a map with Lambro river at the center, we realize that the metropolis of Milan develops and opens symmetrically on both its banks, east to another river, the Adda, and west to the Seveso.

Due to its geographical centrality and the fact that we realize its presence only when it overflows creating serious problems, we should take care of the Lambro with a daily and farsighted care, which we have for a garden, a square or a house. The first impression you get of the Lambro today, making a visit or an inspection, is that it was emotionally abandoned, and that the city does not know absolutely what to do with it: is a smelly stream, overwhelmed by noisy infrastructures, without trails along its banks, whose identity is, if not absent, unmentionable; and it’s not just because of the fact that, in the stretch from Monza to Melegnano, the Lambro is heavily polluted. Observing him, somehow it is understandable why often in the past the rivers were intubated and covered by a road, to be forgotten at least until they overflow and flood the city.

The Lambro, from being an urban taboo as it is today, must go back to being a decent piece of our experience, as neighborhood, city, metropolis, territory or geography it does not matter. As a citizen of Milan, I’d love: to notice his presence, to observe it without being ashamed of its smell and color, to stop and to walk along its banks in some parts, to see implemented new buildings and activities that can come into direct contact with its waters, to remain astonished in front of the urban transformations catalysed by its rehabilitation as well as by its reinvention.

Because they are dangerous, the rivers end up being even considered romantic places; moreover, their waters represent a value for different activities of our society, including industry, agriculture, sanitation, energy production, leisure, mobility networks. The city is full of places and situations hidden or closed, including the River Lambro, that often we

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citizens (sin of presumption), thinking they are no longer recoverable, prefer to remove completely, physically and metaphorically; but this only make the current political-territorial status worse, an status which I would define of unawareness to the many problems but also to the extraordinary opportunities that the great city has to offer.

Perhaps for all of us citizens to know the Lambro is somehow equivalent with a direct contact with the bare physical reality of Milan. These are the years when we’re consuming the metamorphosis and the awareness of Milan from being-city to being-metropolis, with many implications social, economic, town planning, production, mobility, architecture - that inevitably ensue in the coming decades. If we want it, the rivers will become one of the souls of the metropolis.

Ringraziamenti. Questo lavoro, oltre che agli studenti e ai docenti direttamente coinvolti, è debitore a molte persone, singoli ricercatori e presso associazioni e istituzioni. Molte delle riflessioni che lo hanno alimentato sono maturate in progetti con loro condivisi: si ringraziano in particolare i colleghi dello staff del progetto RER Lambro finanziato da Fondazione Cariplo che operano presso ERSAF, Legambiente, Comune di Milano, Parco Media Valle Lambro, DASTU Politecnico di Milano, la DG Ambiente e lo staff responsabili dei Contratti di Fiume Lambro Seveso e Olona presso Regione Lombardia. dei Contratti di Fiume Lambro Seveso e Olona presso Regione Lombardia.

Theme Re-forming Milan Projects for areas and bu- ildings in a state of decay and neglect The School of Architecture at the Politecnico di Milano and the Department of Urban Planning, Private Buildings, Farming of the City of Milan have started with the beginning of the A.A. 2013-2014 the educational project Re-forming Milan. It is the involvement of a large number of teachers and students of the School in the study and design explorations relating to areas and buildings abandoned or in a state of decay located in central and eastern sector of the city. The initiative follows the path of the commitment of the School of Architecture and Society in itself as a place of preparation and experimental design on the issues of the city of Milan and its metropolitan area and discussion on these issues with the public and with the company civil. Areas and buildings have been reported by the Department for Urban Planning and represent a majority of cases recently surveyed because they are in poor conditions. They are therefore representative of the phenomena of sale, underuse, abandonment of buildings and areas, whether publicly or privately owned, of different size, texture, type, phenomena that affect the city of Milan with a strong negative impact on the quality of life of the urban areas in which they are located.

The project has had a significant development during the first two semesters of A. A. 2013-2014, with the participation of about seventy courses or workshops.

A selection of projects will be presented in an exhibition at the Triennale in Milan from 15 July until the end of August The themes of Re-form Milan will be faced with the mode of the intensive program from MIAW 2014. Were selected for the workshop some areas depending on the interest and diversity of project opportunities and the availability of materials documentation.

Issued February 2015