WS.C
Helena Coch Roura and Alessandro Rogora with Claudia Poggi Participants Arianna Garutti Cristina Brambilla Iacopo Renoldi Heidi Ponzoni Ombretta Colangelo Marta Agosti Ana Spiroska ThĂŠrese Chidiac Alice Coletta Ognjen Banovic Jeff Kunshi Petar Lazarov Pinar Ozbakir Nikola Rosic Vardan Serafimov Yimin Xu Lin Zhi
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SAVE FEED UPCYCLE Milano is an industrial metropolis of Italy and one of the most influence cities in Europe. In 2013 the population was of 1.35 million people and if we consider the surrounding towns, that configure a continuous city, this value can be more than doubled. A lot of industries are present and with the growing of the city one of the main problem is to feed the inhabitants. At the moment the necessity is solved with a daily incoming of food with an intensive use of transports but if we consider the problem from the ecological point of view a good opportunity to reduce such dependence of the town from the countryside is to increase local 0 km food production making productive the free areas inside the town. Using the area of Ex Macello (the slaughterhouse) The area is situated in the east of the center of Milano, in one of the many industrial zones of the city. The existing complex is around 15 ha and is very interesting for new potential design strategies and proposals. There is a lot of space that gives the possibility for agricultural development and the existing industrial buildings can be transformed into productive spaces. Thus, the idea was to re-use these buildings into food producers. The new paradigms and the main topics focused in the former design stage were three: feeding the city, saving the buildings and upcycling your life.
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Feed the city 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, eggs, fishes and mushrooms. More than just an agricultural area, it becomes a big green and community space in the neighborhood to feed the inhabitants, but also to re-connect our daily experience with the natural cycles. The introduction of such a project in the area will stimulate the urban-agricultural sector, the permaculture and new activities related to food transformation. Save the buildings Old dismissed buildings represent one of the problems in the transformation of urban areas. These existing buildings are usually 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, to high or bad oriented to be reused and demolition is the common thought to solve the problem. We decided to look for a more sustainable approach and so we tried to minimize the demolitions saving not only the more characteristic buildings but all the possible ones and the wasted materials was reused locally. The concept was to save as much as possible to save the green energy contained in the structures and, possibly, reducing the costs. We demolished only two buildings to give more space to the agricultural production. The saved buildings are used for the new activities and when needed has been upgraded with the required improvements, technologies and. The Liberty buildings are on the very important traffic route viale Molise, while the nice Gallery formerly used for the industrial activities becomes the main figure in the complex and in our project maintain a central role. Upcycle your life “Upcycling is not a simple recycle�, it represents the next step in idea of buildings restoration and saving. Saving the buildings was the first step, but the process must go on to be fully sustainable. We thought to give a new life to the abandoned buildings and we planned to mount 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 is extended to everyday objects: a piece of paper, glass bottles, old bicycle, or old furniture that could be transformed into pieces of art. The paper becomes a fashion piece, an unused piece of metal becomes part of a new bicycle, an old part of a bicycle is transformed in the structure of a seat.
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If we considering the economical aspect all the planned activities (agriculture as well as the upcycling process) require a lot of energy, that’s why we planned to install PV panels for energy production and solar thermal panels for hot water on the roofs. Furthermore, the entire complex, as a community center, becomes also a space for learning, relaxing, shopping and an exhibition center. The center will be open to the visitors, not just to see, but to learn about the agriculture and upcycling processes; this process intends to work as a seed that grooving produce a transformation slowly modifying the society. In specific, this area can host various exhibitions, shops laboratories and activities like fashion or design weeks, food markets… Restaurants, cafes and shops, as well as greenery and squares, are important commercial and leisure elements of the new “exmacello”. The next steps consider the transformation of the area actually used as flower market as well the poultry market. This huge area could be transformed into a productive, urban agricultural factory significantly increasing the food production and reducing the dependence of the town of Milan from fresh vegetable necessities. Of course it will not be sufficient, but new hypothesis and experimentations could be carried out to deeply reconsider the urban structure for a sustainable environment.
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FIRST WEEK: BRAINSTORMING
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INITIAL STEPS: From an abandoned area to a production area
Population of the city of milan has grown to reach more than 1.8 million in 2013. Feed the city aims to generate more cultivated spaces in the ex-macello site in to produce a considerable quantity of vegetables, fruits, poultry, fish. The introduction of such a project in the area will stimulate the agricultural sector to keep developing and feeding the city.
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The aim is to “save the buildings�, trying to change the area positively without invasive actions that are able to revitalize the ex-macello. The project foresees the revitalization of the main buildings situated on the edges of the complex. The liberty buildings situated on viale molise will be preserved.
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Only the interior will be redesigned in order to fit the new functions. The overall management of the complex; co-working spaces; a learning center.
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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 macello in our minds becomes the place of upcycling. Everything that is unused or unwanted is welcome here. Not recycling but upcycling it. The 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.
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SECOND WEEK: DEFINING THE PROJECT
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