Scali Milano

Sette Bellissimi Broli - Seven Beautiful Orchards

Even if the city were a “great machine”, we couldn’t throw it aways like an old cell-phone. Life continuously readapts to the spaces and the buildings of the city, and they are modified to host the new needs. The structure of the city survives the functions giving shape to it, and many buildings and spaces in Milan, such as Palazzo Marino, Ca’ Granda or Brera, host today different activities from the original ones.
Milan is more and more connected to the global dimension, and it is the most open Italian city, where changes and different cultures are welcomed. The urban core of Milan must be seen in relation to an extensive territory, yet its character is very precise and comes from a long and complex history.
The debate around the reform of the rail yards focuses on the topic of the functions and of the building density; but these two factors, although important, do not generate urban quality themselves. In a future reality in constant evolution, the matrix of collective spaces represents the most efficient device to control the urban form: not green as mere «standard» or «service» then, but as actual tool to design the city and the territory.
In Lombardy, the term «brolo» used to indicate a tree-lined lawn, and «broletto» used to be the lawn of the first town hall; we have given this name to our proposal not to evoke nostalgic sceneries, but to connote a natural space with a primary character, simple and strong but open to many different uses.
The reformed spaces of the rail yards will be able to establish new links between the extended metropolis and the actual urban scale of the sites where they are located. They reconnect parts of the city that today are separated, hosting new services and new open space with high environmental qualities; green spaces that are able to create a new friendly atmosphere for the quarters, reactivating the network of paths across the existing agricultural land remaining contiguous to the expansions of the metropolis, creating new ecological networks within the city.
Our proposal is not founded on a program of specific functions, but it rather theorises 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 rathe 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 urban configurations we propose create places with a different vocation, scale and character 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».
Beside 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.

Credits

Urban design and architecture - Team leader
CZA - CINO ZUCCHI ARCHITETTI

Urban design and architecture – Architects under 40
PIOVENEFABI

Environment and landscape
MDP — MICHEL DESVIGNE PAYSAGISTE

Mobility, transportation and infrastructure
SYSTEMATICA

Energy and sustainability
STEFANO PAREGLIO

Sociology and culture
ALDO BONOMI/AASTER

Typological and architectural explorations
BAUKUH
IFDESIGN
ONSITESTUDIO

Architectural models
ONEOFF MILANO

3D views
MVOA - MATTEO VECCHI OFFICEOF ARCHITECTURE