Monolith

cimitero monumentale

porta nuova \ garibaldi

porta volta

porta nuova

piazza della repubblica

arena civica

castello sforzesco

foro bonaparte

piazza duomo

stazione centrale

teatro alla scala

pinacoteca di brera

galleria v.emanuele II

Spanish Walls

01_threshold 02_measure 03_rhytm

04_infrastructure 05_web of services 06_development (?)

Traces

Centripetal City

PathsProject Axes

Axis of Continuity - Concept Axis of Fragmentation - Concept

Centrifugal City

Francesco Ronchi - 736540

I D E N T I T YTo act in a metropolitan city, as can be seen

Milan with his own hinterland, which through

the ages has always played a major role and that

it was also the subject of radical changes in the

political, economic, administrative and social

field which inevitably impacted on the urban

sphere, needs a level of investigation and re-

flection on the urban scale before architectu-

ral one, especially if the project represents a

key point in the urban mesh. The plot is loca-

ted along the ancient Spanish Walls, whose

construction began immediately after the me-

dieval period, and was therefore by a historical

point of view an area strongly marked as a th-

reshold, an urban entrance to the city. Nowa-

days fully divested in favor of the realization of

a first ring road, is embedded in the radial

tissue of Milan as a second line of demarcation

between the first ring of walls and the road

bypass.Comparing a reconstruction of the

original city wall with what we consider the

trace (well recognized) that this has left within

the urban mesh of Milan, it is clear as it has

always played a dual role,a fence from the

inside to which the development is done with

patterns typical of the old town and, from the

outside firstly as a threshold and then as a cor-

nerstone of modern urban developement.

The intent to search for a new genius loci arises

from the behavior of the first round of the

walls. As we can see before the total demoli-

tion, these, together with a few main roads,

have regulated urban development, providing

with rhythms and measures the mesh, while

after the demolition this function has failed

according to a shift of the main axes in behalf

first of axes infrastructure (roads, rail,

subway) and recently of the axes of services.

Obvious fact is the tendency to post-modern

patterns of development, acting within the

dense and layered tissue, creating gaps in

which place these services to create new pola-

rities on which set a new urban mesh, that ho-

wever often characterize themselves as empty

and self-referred, massified, globalized and

gentrificated. These new polarities also relates

to a centrifugal model of the city, which aims

at a sprawled urbanism, in contrast with the

centripetal model of the historic city. The

project area is now like “no man's land” betwe-

en two strong axialities, a historical one that

links Cimitero Monumentale to the historical

center and the cathedral through Porta Tena-

glia and the other one that intercepts the Porta

Nuova area tracing out axis that unites many of

the interventions for EXPO2015 (City Life,

Portello, Cascina Merlata,Expo Area ..) in

NW direction; hence the aim of redefining a

new border and an identity now lost.

"Today , the attributes that made threshold in-

termediary and passage have been removed,

and so threshold is a distinctive motive betwe-

en interior and exterior, between confined re-

gions and broad extensions, between closed

and open places. Here it returns as a crest of

form, and also line of force, a mark of con-

densations and a consolidated ‘nervous

system’ which render it a ‘place of remarkable

places’. In the conplex dwelling, threshold op-

poses the crossing of undifferentiated space,

which is spread out and undecipherable, in-

terposing surroundings and accumulations

which can be recognised on a scale of charac-

teristic and intersecting relations. If the an-

cient accepted meaning is reversed, then the

very dividing elements will become connective

so as to reinforce the sustaining frameworks of

a larger transformation. An analogy is postu-

lated between ‘threshold’ an ‘outline’, both of

which are borderline states of the form that

demarcates varied fields, critical situations of

heterogeneous regions,where the condensa-

tions ossifying the dwelling hold out against

the disintegration of the dwellings restoring a

matrix to these. The modern avant-garde -

antagonist of the exhaustive urban grids - in-

dicates this phenomenon when models of

urban condensation are proposed: the tecto-

nic threshold becomes a local specification of

entire urban systems and it is opened up to the

principle of ‘sequence’. This sequence is not a

succession of multiple doorways, but rather a

four-dimensional relation of the settlement

fragments in the contemporality of space-ti-

me. The sequential redefining of threshold

draws out the fifth dimension, the memory di-

mension, which today is the critical line resi-

stance against ‘media’ superimposition and

the resulting ‘cultural’ deletions."(S.Crotti)

Have been identified two main design axis

with profoundly different features; an axis

of penetration in SE direction, the axis of

continuity, which opens a rhythmic succes-

sion of orderly open spaces, and an axis of

flowing EW, axis of the fragmentation, that

following the traces of the ancient Spanish

walls, it inherits their disruption.