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A feasibility study around the creations of new places between the metropolitan and the local scale, where a blooming vegetal world gives rhythm and shape to new urban portions capable of answer to the desire and needs rising day by day in the city.
Life of the urban forms
Even if the city is a “great machine” we cannot throw it away like we do with an old cellphone, life continuously readapts to the spaces and to the buildings of the city, which consequently changes to host the new needs. The structure of the city survives to the late functions that has gave it shape, as for example happens in many Milanese cases such Palazzo Marino, Ca’ Granda or Brera which today host different activities from the original ones.
The metamorphoses of Milan
In a more and more connected Milan, where transformations and cultural exchanges are welcomed, the urban core must be seen in relation to the extended territory, yet in relation with the clear and distinct Milanese character which has a long and complex history.
Open space as environmental matrix
The debate around the reform of the rail yards focuses on the functions and on the building density but these two factors, although important, do not generate urban quality themselves. In a future scenario in constant evolution, the matrix of collective spaces represents the most efficient device to control the urban form: ‘green’ not as mere ‘standard’ or ‘service’ but an actual tool to design the city and its territory.
In Lombardy, the term “brolo” used to indicate a tree-lined lawn, and “broletto” would be the lawn of the first town hall; we have given this name to our proposal not to evoke nostalgic scenarios but to recall the primary character of a natural space, simple and strong but open to different uses.
The Circle of the new Orchards, place of connection between the metropolis and the districts
The reformed spaces of the rail yards establish new links between the extended metropolis and the actual urban scale of the sites where they are located. They constitute places open to the city, bearers of great environmental quality creating new ecological networks within the city, new services, and a new convivial dimension capable of reconnecting neighborhoods that are now separated.
The functions of the city and time
The proposal is not based on a program of specific functions, but it rather theorizes that the new parts of the city must be flexible and capable of changing. The structure of the city is not and shouldn’t be generated by a functional program, but rather continuously «tested» by it; it must be able to support long-lasting transformations, and eventual changes related to the local communities’ desires and unpredictable needs.
The character of a place
The proposed urban configurations create places with different vocations, scales, and characters within a polycentric urban landscape. Farini Rail Yard becomes a great park with sinuous paths and pedestrian runways overpassing the railway, Porta Romana Rail Yard becomes a great sloping lawn, open towards Prada Foundation and a market-square which interchanges between the new railway station and buses terminus, Lambrate Rail Yard becomes a great green «crescent».
Apart from its specific forms, our proposal represents a contribution to reflect about future Milan’s challenges and the method to engage with them. It is ideally connected to Carlo Cattaneo’s «Idea of Civil Magnificence», where the beauty of the city is expression of the collective values and conquests of a forward-looking society.
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