W team miawspaper by MIAW POLIMI

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miawSPAPER e ub c The

Politecnico di Milano. School of Architecture and Society.

2014

MIAW

indice Abstract..............pag. 5 Miaw................. pag. 7 Team ................pag. 9 Map.................. pag. 11 Manifesto............ pag. 13 Sections.............. pag. 15 INterviews............ pag. 47 In the cube.......... pag. 96

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section W. Miaw 2014. Matteo Calati, Marina Curtaz, Lucrezia De Capitani, Leonardo Gatti, Giulia Lavagnoli, Margherita Napolitano, Azadeh Moradiasr, Clarissa Orsini, Saeed Rezaei, Claudia Scaravaggi, Yafim Simanovsky, Laura Solarino, Elizaveta Sudravskaya, Sun Zhi Xing. Guest SĂŠbastien Marot Hosts Alessandro Rocca and Giovanni La Varra

miawSPAPER ABSTRACT e ub c The

Politecnico di Milano. School of Architecture and Society.

2014

MIAW

This book is made by the students of Section W and is a collection of the work of the students that have taken part at the 2014 MIAW workshop. The following pages are the result of the poster we hung on the CUBE during this week. We thought was nice to have a real book about the workshop so we could see the differences between the various sections and their work. I hope you enjoy reading it as we did making it.

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miawSPAPER

Politecnico di Milano. School of Architecture and Society.

MIAW

2014

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miaw

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 the city 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.

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section W. Miaw 2014. Matteo Calati, Marina Curtaz, Lucrezia De Capitani, Leonardo Gatti, Giulia Lavagnoli, Margherita Napolitano, Azadeh Moradiasr, Clarissa Orsini, Saeed Rezaei, Claudia Scaravaggi, Yafim Simanovsky, Laura Solarino, Elizaveta Sudravskaya, Sun Zhi Xing. Guest Sébastien Marot Hosts Alessandro Rocca and Giovanni La Varra

Mehdi Moradi

Matteo Calati

Margherita Napolitani

Marina Curtaz

Lucrezia de Capitani Yaf im Simanovsky

Clauda Scaravaggi Elizaveta Sudravskaya Laura Solarino

Saeed Rezaei

Sun Zhi Xing

Clarissa Orsini Azadeh Moradiasr

Leonardo Gatti

Tutors Giovanni La Varra, Alessandro Rocca

Giulia Lavagnoli Guest SĂŠbastien Marot

miawSPAPER e ub c The

Politecnico di Milano. School of Architecture and Society.

2014

MIAW

team I am here to introduce you to the section W hosted by Alessandro Rocca and Giovanni La Varra with Sèbastien 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!

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section W. Miaw 2014. Matteo Calati, Marina Curtaz, Lucrezia De Capitani, Leonardo Gatti, Giulia Lavagnoli, Margherita Napolitano, Azadeh Moradiasr, Clarissa Orsini, Saeed Rezaei, Claudia Scaravaggi, Yafim Simanovsky, Laura Solarino, Elizaveta Sudravskaya, Sun Zhi Xing. Guest Sébastien Marot Hosts Alessandro Rocca and Giovanni La Varra

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Politecnico di Milano. School of Architecture and Society.

2014

MIAW section W DSW.03 section A

WHERE YOU F IND OTHER WORKSHOP

DSW.02

section E

s p a m

section D section B ground floor

section C

section F

first floor

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miawSPAPER O T S E F I N A M

w a i m team initiatives

How can you interact witH us ?

You can find us on Facebook! Check out the Facebook page MIAW 2014, we will be uploading articles, pictures and video about what’s going on these days of workshop.

what happened

A brief interview with Sébastien Marot, philosopher and critic in archi¬tecture and landscape design. A pleasant conversation about the most important themes discussed during the lecture of the first day of workshop and some insights related to landscape, architecture and the architects' role nowadays. Inside the journal you can find the intere interview.

The CUBE! You can find our space outside of aula Rogers where we will hang every day the MIAWSPAPER, come find us and interact with us. Post-it! Leave your opinion whenever you want on the cube and just post your comments and critics, your opinion matters! Daily word! We will try to find a daily word from the lectures we attend every day, to summarize the whole meaning of the seminars.

ready to start

Section B organized its work by dividing the students into groups composed by four people; they also divided the are area of Corso XXII Marzo, so each group has to project a small area of the site. They’re asked to project and rethink the areas, starting from analyzing the site and making a 1:100 maquette of the area. They started with brainstorming and presenting each group’s ideas.

DSW 03 group is working on Rubattino area. The project is going to be an urban riqualification of old barracks. As it has to become a masterplan the idea is to work a lot with the urban context and landscape. The functional side is on the students choice. The work is in grops of two or three persons so the students can exchange their points of you. Two girls told that they alredy have a great idea about the project. They would like to create a research center connected to Politecnico di Milano and recreate an agricultural area. At wednesday they are american students from New York Institute of Tecnology comming to join the DSW03 group! They are the students of professor Jon Michael Schwarting who partecipates at MIAW. He has already worked in Italy for several times for projects such as Segrate park and is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome.

Mobile scenograpHies insiDe tHe patio

As the second day of workshop starts I am here to 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”. The scenographies were designed and built during a workshop 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 called “filo da torcere” made and performed by Bottini, Manchetti and Riva.

Calati Matteo, Curtaz Marina, De Capitani Lucrezia, Gatti Leonardo, Lavagnoli Giulia, Napolitano Marcherita, Orsini Clarissa, Rezaei Saeed, Scaravaggi Claudia, Simanowsky Yafim, Solarino Laura, Sudravskaya Elizaveta, Sun Zhi Xing. Guest Sébastien Marot with Alessandro Rocca and Giovanni La Varra

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Politecnico di Milano. School of Architecture and Society.

2014

MIAW

SECTIONS 15

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MIAW

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 yesterday night, Gennaro Postiglione MIAW's director and Enrico Forestieri.

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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

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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.

Section B, hosted by Giancarlo Floridi and Matteo Aimini with the help of Hector Fernandez Elorza, has been working on the area of Corso XXII Marzo. During the week each group was asked to project a part of the area: first they built together a 1:100 maquette of the area made with recycled materials. Today they’re working on tomorrow’s exposition: each group has to prepare a 1:100 maquette and two A3 where they have to present their project with the help of drawings and references to show their idea and the general concept of the project. At the end of the workshop, on the final exhibition, Section B is going to prepare new models with an unusual material for small models: concrete. In the specific a group of the class is working on a sport center that will be built completely underground except for a small part that will be on the ground, recalling the idea of the iceberg. They studied a way to permit the light to enter in the parts underground and they thought that the best solution was to leave the borders of the square empty so the light can go in. Students’ opinions on how the workshop was organized were very positive: they loved how their section was a mixture of nationalities and stated that the exchange of opinions from different countries and cultures was extremely helpful for the final result. Hector Fernandez Elorza was the guest of this section, unfortunately yesterday he had to leave, but students said that working with him was a great experience and he gave them great ideas for their works. “He's an awesome person, polite and very nice and he gave us motivation to work” and also “He was really open minded and he stimulated us to work; his teaching approach is very different than how we usually work” stated students from section B. 23

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section

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SECTION 25

Professor Alessandro Rogora, from Politecnico di Milano, is the director of Section C: he organized the section into 4 groups composed by 5 members. The groups, for the first day, were asked to analyze the site they’re working on and come up with some ideas for the project. In the afternoon of the second day, groups are going to present their ideas and their work so far to the class: each group has worked on a presentation where they expose the issues in the area and what could be the solution. The class is supposed to play a game where they’re asked to stick some post it on the board, each containing some key words that are going to be used to increase interaction, discussion and stimulate ideas exchange. When each group starts to have some early and immature ideas, not yet actualized into any form or drawing, the professor is going to exchange the projects: group one is going to work on group two’s idea and so on. This approach is useful for students, explains Alessandro Rogora, to learn how to be critic with other projects and not to grow fond into their own ideas and opinions, to be able to work on different ideas. We asked some students to talk about the initial fases of their project: “They asked to find a concept for the area, to have some general idea and to find a final goal we have to reach at the end of the week. We are now working on the presentation, where we have to show some reference, some images that represent our idea. We’re still far from knowing what the concept is going to be, observing the area and coming up with some early ideas.” We also asked their opinion about yesterday’s lecture by Sebastien Marot: “It was a strange lecture: people who are interested in architecture and in literature in the same time often sound crazy, but with their craziness they have very interesting and stimulating points of view. I don’t know how they make it happen, but I guess that’s how art happens”.

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Renato d â&#x20AC;&#x2122;Alencon Castrillon

The ex macello is the area chosen by the section D of this workshop. The teachers are strictly involved in ONG project (PRIN) related to the reuse of physical materials and buildings damaged after catastrophes. The chosen area is one of the few areas in Milan that can really be reactivated through the recycle of he existing rubbles. To realize this idea the teachers asked to the students to propose a first idea for the area and after a common discussion they gave them three different strategies through which they will have to realize a new project using rubble and virtual ruins. Through this approach they are trying to push the students to use what is already present in the area avoiding demolition or to demolish and reusing the physical rubbles that should always been considered as the first starting point for a new project in an already existing reality. Heritage is not only the monumental building that we all knows and try to preserve but it also exist in every single structure through which our cities are made of.

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SECTION Domestic value is also heritage

c i t es

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c n e l A â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

a C on

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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 “exmacello” 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 requalification. 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. 35

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Do you know anything about section ?

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dSW 02

DSW02 section is working on the Lamroscape. It is hold by Sebastiano Brandolini, Nicolas Gilsoul, Gunter Vogt as guests and Antonio Longo, Alessandro Rocca, Talita Medina as the host. The professors are looking for an artistic sensitive approach. The students work with the categories such as visual perception, noises, vegetation and smells. This section's goal is to create the future scenaries for the Lambro river area. These can be even utopies. The relation between the city and the river is fundamental because now Lambro is considered as a barrior. Students have spent almost all the week visiting the site. Now they're working on the sketches. There is one girl who is designing her project according to the different noises. As a workshop result student will produce the serious of photomontages for their futuristic ideas.

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DSW 02

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dsw 03

Today the DSW03 group visited their project site for the first time. They are working on Rubattino barracks an impenetrable island inside the city of Milan. In fact it was not even possible to enter into the site itself. There is a high wall dividing the inside from the outside. As the group working a lot on the urban context the professors took them to see the surroundings: from Lambrate train station until the Lambro park. The Rubattino barracks were supposed to be transformed by Milan city plan a couple of years ago. But in the end the city council decided to keep them as a military zone where nowadays only a few military personnel stays on duty and the space is used as a deposit for materials and vehicles. The key question is whether to take the reality as it is (which means the barrack are untouchable and you can work only with the surroundings) or to follow the old Milan city plan and transform them. We will see which will be the students' choice.

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DSW 03

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miawSPAPER e ub c The

Politecnico di Milano. School of Architecture and Society.

2014 2014

MIAW

INTERVIEWS 47

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Politecnico di Milano. School of Architecture and Society.

2014

MIAW

t o r a M it en

s a b Se YEST ERDAY ’S LECT URE

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section W. Miaw 2014. Matteo Calati, Marina Curtaz, Lucrezia De Capitani, Leonardo Gatti, Giulia Lavagnoli, Margherita Napolitano, Azadeh Moradiasr, Clarissa Orsini, Saeed Rezaei, Claudia Scaravaggi, Yafim Simanovsky, Laura Solarino, Elizaveta Sudravskaya, Sun Zhi Xing. Guest Sébastien Marot Hosts Alessandro Rocca and Giovanni La Varra

t o r a M tien

s a Seb F eel your nostalgia

2014

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 architects. The city traditionally was something easy to destinguish from something else. Nowadays the situation has really changed. Now the word “city” is carrying so many things that it is difficult to understand what you mean when you say “city”. At least it is not that easily distuiguishable from another 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 used to be called the countryside. We should better look on what it is happening there, the way agriculture 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 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 landscape? A: Jackson made a distinction between three kind of landscape and three different periods. I think that his great hesitation is linked with hyperlinks. 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 situations you have difficulties 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 no specific point of view and they are simultaneously there. For this reason we need to develop a vertical understanding of what landscapes are and to make them in a way simultaneously enjoyable although they are really different one from the other. This is why I like the image of the hypertext: it makes you link together things that are completely independent one from another. This can be the metaphore of the work that architects can do locally. These 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 the 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 powerful enough to do the reverse demonstration, until I went to Cornell University to do a lecture in Ithaca, I discovered a wonderful landscape of gorges, when you look at a gorge that has been curved by the glacier and modified by erosion, when you look at its section, you will see that there is a sedimentary layer: the last compressed trace of an epoch 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 skyscraper you can call it “earthscraper”, and this is why I chose 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

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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 itself what can it do, they have a site not a programme. It’s never purely a programme that comes first, it is more a dialectical binomy. So when we look at the planet and landscape then we add new questions, what can be the role of the architect? I think that at least it is important coming from the site to the programme; in any case it 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

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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 have 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 difficult 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 where you should share ideas.

miawSPAPER e ub c The

Politecnico di Milano. School of Architecture and Society.

2014

MIAW

T ODAY’ ’S LECT URE

n e j Jur

a r t s n i e Z

Today we will have the opportunity to attend to two different lectures by two guest teachers of MIAW Workshop: Jurjen Zeinstra and Héctor Fernández Elorza. Jurjen Zeinstra works as acting associate professor in the Chair of Interiors at Delft University of Technology and has been an editor of both OASE and Forum, and together with Mikel van Gelderen he founded Zeinstra van Gelderen Architects. This team works on a variety of commissions that include architecture, urbanism, public space and interior design. The practice is drawn towards exploring the issues that somehow are related to architecture, art and society. Subsequently, we try to pursue the realisation the designs that follow from this exploration. It’s not so much the particular scale, but more the experimental challenge we set ourselves as designers. The second guest teacher, Héctor Fernández Elorza is from Spain and took his degree at Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid, ETSAM, where he is lecturing professor in Architectural Projects. Today he will talk about his working method and main concepts that are reflected in his projects. Using raw primary materials such as concrete and galvanized steel, simple forms, and an adroit manipulation of scale, the Madrid-based architect Héctor Fernández Elorza gives even small projects a monumental authority. Despite the obvious differences, his connection to Scandinavia, where he spent two years after graduation, also distinguishes him from his Spanish contemporaries, inspiring perhaps that streak of romantic theatricality that pushes his work toward the sublime.

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section W. Miaw 2014. Matteo Calati, Marina Curtaz, Lucrezia De Capitani, Leonardo Gatti, Giulia Lavagnoli, Margherita Napolitano, Azadeh Moradiasr, Clarissa Orsini, Saeed Rezaei, Claudia Scaravaggi, Yafim Simanovsky, Laura Solarino, Elizaveta Sudravskaya, Sun Zhi Xing. Guest Sébastien Marot Hosts Alessandro Rocca and Giovanni La Varra

n e j Jur

a r t s n i e Z

Conversation with Jurjen ZEInst ra

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Q – Could you tell us a little about your own history and studies? A – I studied in Delft at the TU, where I am now teaching. Looking back, I realize that my days as a student in Delft coincided with a huge change in the position of architecture in Dutch culture. People like Aldo van Eyck and Herman Herzberger who were members of Team 10, were still teaching in the school when I arrived as a student. Their influence on Dutch architecture in the 1970’s was enormous, but when I studied in the 1980’s, you could see this movement becoming a bit tired, a bit aged. Many of the epigones dominated the architecture of social housing, and with all their concern for social issues, they often missed an awareness of material qualities and detailing. What was interesting when I came to the Faculty in Delft, you saw that people were looking for a new kind of inspiration. So you had people like Max Risselada who was one of my teachers, he also gave a lecture here and made some amazing exhibitions. He was started to look back at the very early sources of modernism like the Russian Constructivist architecture, not so much as an architectural style but as one of the sources of typologies of social housing. Projects that were done in the 1920's like the Narkomfin building by Ginzburg, but also other studies, were very interesting and had a great influence on the architects that were trained in Delft in the 1980’s. This re-appreciation of early modernism led to a strong focus on typological studies, so you might say that the side effect of this was that our thinking about architecture became quite diagrammatic with less attention for materials, for detailing. In the last years of my study I was quite impressed by Rem Koolhaas, who had a strong influence on a whole generation of Dutch architects. When I graduated at the end of the 80's, by coincidence a friend of mine had a small commission for building row houses and he asked me to join and we had an office just like that. We didn't know many things but

we had a lot of friends who worked in architect offices who helped us (…) And this was great because the best way of learning these things, is by simply doing them. (…) Next to my practice, I have always been interested in writing and researching. Already as a student I became a member of the editorial team of a magazine called OASE that was initiated by students in Delft. I like to investigate the ‘borders’ of architecture, and things that are pushing those borders a bit. (…) What is interesting is that if you go to the borders or limits of our discipline, you become more aware of what the discipline is actually about. I wrote an article in an issue of OASE on art and architecture in the 1960's, called "Houses of the Future" that tries to describe this. [http://www.oasejournal.nl/en/Issues/75/HousesOfTheFuture#203] In this text I reflect on a number of projects by Archigram, that explore the limits and consequences of thinking about the domestic in a very radical way, and I position them against the Smithsons. (…) In that time we were quite interested in this 1960’s stuff. So when Rem Koolhaas started giving lectures in Delft we recognized this 1960's tradition that we didn't have in Delft. Although he was clearly influenced by the 1960's he also was taking a position against it, because these Archigram people were literally his teacher. And, as you know, so one of the things you have to do is to "kill" your teachers, to take over their position. Anyway, another editor of OASE was Mikel van Gelderen, he started in Delft a little bit later. We worked together as editors, but I never did any design project with him. One day when we met we discovered that we both were considering to take part in the Europan competition, so we decided to join forces. We won the competition and got a commission for 250 apartments in Emmen, which initiated our office. Q – Could you talk about the role of writing in your architecture? A – For me writing is a way of investigating things that also play a role in our architecture or that fascinate me. It’s not that I write about the work of our office: I see writing as some sort of exploration. Q – What about today's workshop? A – I'm not doing this alone, they say I'm the teacher but actually it's a cooperation with Enrico Forestieri and Gennaro Postiglione. What we decided was to take the area of Corso XXII Marzo, there we discovered a very peculiar housing block, with traditional

Q â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Do you have any nice sketches ready to show? A â&#x20AC;&#x201C; We asked the students this morning to put everything on the wall, to create a kind of atmosphere a bit like what you see in those detective series on the television with busy meetings in too small rooms with pictures of the crime scene on the wall and lines drawn between possible suspects and so on. It's very important that this investigation is not only a form of digital communication, like dropbox for sharing information, but also that you really see the information. We have divided the students in subgroups so all the sub-groups are working on a certain aspect of this project. Some are doing interviews with inhabitants, some are doing interviews with the architect. Some are doing a little bit of historic research about the background of social housing in Italy, some are photographic the facades or building a model. So everyone is doing a small fragment. But it is very important to also get the larger picture and therefore you need to pin up all the work. This will help to develop an idea about a sensible intervention in the city of Milan.

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late 19th century facades surrounding a seemingly late 1970â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s brutalist project. This was for us quite interesting because in the short time of a workshop you can easily get lost in the scale of the city and end up with formal, diagrammatic proposals So we consider this block, which is not very well known, as a kind of microcosm of the city. Some parts are ugly, some parts are maybe even beautiful, some parts are transformed or appropriated by the inhabitants. And then there is this strange collision of historic facades, and radically new elements.. We use it like a found object, something that you discover, and we will concentrate just on this one block and how you can create an intervention in that block.

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Politecnico di Milano. School of Architecture and Society.

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T ODAY’ ’S LECT URE

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section W. Miaw 2014. Matteo Calati, Marina Curtaz, Lucrezia De Capitani, Leonardo Gatti, Giulia Lavagnoli, Margherita Napolitano, Azadeh Moradiasr, Clarissa Orsini, Saeed Rezaei, Claudia Scaravaggi, Yafim Simanovsky, Laura Solarino, Elizaveta Sudravskaya, Sun Zhi Xing. Guest Sébastien Marot Hosts Alessandro Rocca and Giovanni La Varra

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Hec F eel your space

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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

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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.

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Politecnico di Milano. School of Architecture and Society.

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She is a spanish architect who graduated in 1988 at University of Catalunya and she obtained a PhD at the school of Architecture of Barcelona in 2003. She is actually Associate Professor of Environmental Control at UPC and she is responsible for the Master in “Architecture, Energy and Environment” and for the PhD program related to this master. She operates as a professional architect in the field of renewable energy and natural energy in architecture. Her main research includes also architectural design and its relations with energy and environment. She is the guest of the section C of the workshop MIAW 2014 with Alessandro Rogora and Claudia Poggi.

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section W. Miaw 2014. Matteo Calati, Marina Curtaz, Lucrezia De Capitani, Leonardo Gatti, Giulia Lavagnoli, Margherita Napolitano, Azadeh Moradiasr, Clarissa Orsini, Saeed Rezaei, Claudia Scaravaggi, Yafim Simanovsky, Laura Solarino, Elizaveta Sudravskaya, Sun Zhi Xing. Guest Sébastien Marot Hosts Alessandro Rocca and Giovanni La Varra

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what is really sustainable ?

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Q: Estamos haciendo este workshop que desarrolla el tema de recuperación de algunas áreas abandonadas de Milán en maneras diferentes dependiendo de cómo los profesores quieran acercarse al trabajo, que le parece su taller y todo el MIAW en general? A: Creo que este tipo de workshop son muy interesantes para los estudiantes internacionales y también mucho para los profesores, los estudiantes nunca piensan que los profesores aprendemos mucho, un profesor cuando es profesor no le gusta ensenar, lo que le gusta es aprender. Normalmente cuando se da una clase habitual se aprende mucho menos pero en cambio cuando estás mas en relación con los estudiantes, cuando haces talleres y cuando haces este tipo de workshop es mucho mas fácil aprender de los estudiantes que en este caso además son estudiantes de distintos países y distintos niveles. Q: En que campo trabajas? A: Yo trabajo sobre el área del control ambiental en la arquitectura con medios físicos, es decir la percepción, el confort interior y exterior. Mi tema de trabajo es la percepción y el confort, eso se puede conseguir con los que llamamos medios naturales (luz natural, térmico natural, ventilación, acústica) o medios artificiales ( iluminación, ventilación, climatización) y yo creo que en esta segunda parte que es el tema de la iluminación, la calefacción, la climatización los arquitectos están perdiendo territorio, un territorio muy interesante porque, por ejemplo en el tema de la luz, si tienes un teatro con el mismo espacio solo cambiando la luz tienes el campo, una taberna…muchos escenarios y prácticamente la escenografía de teatro se hace por el 80% con la luz. Los arquitectos hemos entrado muy poco en el tema de la luz artificial y creo que deberíamos utilizarla como recurso arquitectónico mas que simplemente como hecho: hay luz no hay luz, hay niebla no hay niebla, como un fluido que se pasea y que mágicamente ilumina; en cambio hay espacios que están iluminado con voluntad y cambia muchísimo, si es que realmente quieres ver el suelo, quieres ver las

paredes, lo que quieres enfatizar de aquel espacio, en los temas técnicos nos involucramos pocos y es un terreno con muchísimas posibilidades. Q: Estas intentando llevar a los estudiantes de este taller en este tema en algunas manera? A: Estamos mas en la parte natural que en la artificial, no estamos llegando, no creo que vayamos a llegar a tema del artificial pero el tema del confort creo que si, es un tema que estamos considerando. Q: En que área de Milán estáis trabajando y como le parece ese sito? A: En el ex macello. Se han hechos muchas operaciones sobre en tema del ex macello y creo que sea un tema interesante y recurrente, en muchas grandes ciudades se han hechos experiencias, el matadero de Madrid por ejemplo es una referencia que el otro día les ensené a los estudiantes, hay algunas ciudades en el norte de Italia y algunas en el norte de España que han tenido una época industrial importante en la industrialización del final del siglo XIX y el principio del XX y estas zonas ocupaban un espacio que era externo a la ciudad, en el momento que la ciudad ha crecido estos lugares se han quedado dentro de la ciudad. Hay dos operaciones posibles cuando tenemos un terreno que antes era muy barato porque estaba muy lejos pero ahora esta dentro de la ciudad: está la primera opción especulativa, hagamos viviendas, creo pero que aquí en todos los proyectos que se están proponiendo se está desarrollando la segunda opción posible, la versión no especulativa que intenta lleva el pensamiento a encontrar una manera para que este trozo de ciudad revierta en la cuidad y dé mas vida en el entorno y que actividades se pueden organizar. Aquí tenemos de repente una súper plaza que sino no la tendríamos. Q: Los habéis dejado libres de elegir el tema que mas les guste? A: Si, los hicimos solo reflexionar un poco sobre las ventajas de tener una superficie muy grande como

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la que tenemos en el ex macello. Hay muchos metros cuadrados, entonces la pregunta era que actividades requieren de muchos metros cuadrados que normalmente no se pueden hacer porque no hay suficiente espacio? Al principio proponían por ejemplo una escuela de teatro, pero una escuela de teatro se puede hacer en un lugar muy reducido, en una zona urbana muy consolidada, entonces busquemos actividades que no pueden estar normalmente en la ciudad porque requieren muchos metros cuadrados de terreno libre y verde. Esta era un no tanto la condición que les poníamos si no un poco sobre lo que les hacíamos reflexionar para que tomaran decisiones ligadas a esta gran superficie que teníamos. Q: Están llegando a resultados satisfactorios? A: Hay varias de las propuestas que mas desarrolladas creo que serian interesantes. Lo que plantea nuestro grupo es hacer algo productivo, algo que produzca algo, como una serie de zonas donde se cultiva; organizan tres tipos de cultivos: uno de huertos urbanos particulares donde la gente pueda ir a cultivar su hortaliza, porque así hay muchas personas que van a ir a este lugar, luego hay otra zona como de cultivo mas a grande escala para producir un tipo de comida que luego se pueda procesar allá mismo y acabar haciendo restaurantes de kilómetros cero, luego hay otro edificio que queda un poco separado y han hecho una propuesta de reciclaje: tienen un espacio como de reciclaje donde hay unas oficinas de carpinteros, pintores… que arreglan muebles y luego hay un mercadito donde vuelven a venderlos para cerrar un poco todo el proceso productivo. Producen verdes y se lo comen, reparan obyectos y los venden; me parece interesante como propuesta. Q: In your lecture of yesterday you spoke about very contemporary and important themes related to sustainability (soil consumption, re-use of architecture, sharing of spaces). How and where did you develop this sensibility to these environmental themes? A: It is a long time that I am working on the natural architecture and in the field of bioclimatic architecture. But I think that we are in a certain point in which there is a great

interest in the global energy, bioclimatic architecture and we are loosing the things that are more related to design without adjectives, only design. We are in a circle in which we are producing buildings that are not sustainable and we add a lot of "gadgets" to make them more efficient, but I think that their role should start at the beginning of the design process. I am coming back to this beggining point of the process, I have been working for a lot of years in bioclimatic architecture, lighting of buildings, and all these things, but I think that it is important to include this idea in designing from the beginning. If architects can not include the rennoval energy in our reportois we can't go ahead. We have to deal with photovoltaic, solar panels in the same way in which we use windows, doors. Q: If you think about the current situation of the earth, which can be the approach of new generations of architects? Do you have any suggestions for us? A: I think that the new generations have to forget the gadgets and the word "sustainable" and think more about architecture from the point of view of the comfort, and having in mind to share things, to have the right dimensions, to forget this huge buildings that are like points in the cities and don't have in account the users. We must return to the users, and to their feelings, to make them feel more comfortable, we have to deal with the human scale. (...) Q: Can you tell us some books that change your way of seeing architecture and that you think a student of arcitecture should read? A: I don't have an answer to this question. I read a lot. I think that is different for everyone, and even it

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depends on the moment of your life. If I read a book that I had read ten years ago, now I can see and understand things that I coudn't see then. It is the same thing with the films. It depends on your mind, you are always changing. The important thing is that you have never to be without doing anything, you have to walk, walking means understanding and seeing different things. I think that not only architectural reading are important, every kind of book can open your mind, maybe more.

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Politecnico di Milano. School of Architecture and Society.

2014

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Do you know Renat o D ’ALENCON CASTRILLON ?

Renato D’Alençon Castrillón is a Chilean Architect. He graduated from the School of Architecture of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and Master of Architecture in Cornell University. He has been a teacher at the Universidad Católica de Chile in the areas of architectural design and building technology. He is currently working in the Technische Universität in Berlin, as lecturer, researcher and teacher, with a focus on energy and buildings design and building technology. He is also co-founder of the Energy and Building Teaching-Research Group, an international initiative promoting effective learning in these areas with social commitment by direct field work. He was awarded a Fulbright Grant from 2002 to 2004 to pursue his Master Degree and a Deutsche Akademischer Austausch Dienst Grant to pursue a PhD Degree in Technische Universität Berlin, starting 2008.

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section W. Miaw 2014. Matteo Calati, Marina Curtaz, Lucrezia De Capitani, Leonardo Gatti, Giulia Lavagnoli, Margherita Napolitano, Azadeh Moradiasr, Clarissa Orsini, Saeed Rezaei, Claudia Scaravaggi, Yafim Simanovsky, Laura Solarino, Elizaveta Sudravskaya, Sun Zhi Xing. Guest Sébastien Marot Hosts Alessandro Rocca and Giovanni La Varra

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reclaiming heritage

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Q: How did you translate and apply what you have learned in Europe in your experiences in Chile and in Haiti? A: We took the idea of reusing materials from Europe, in the Netherlands in particular there are two or three architectural practices doing this work: they developed a methodology called "harvest mapping", where they chart the sources for reusing materials out of the urban context, abandoned buildings, farms and industries that were left over, containers and so on. Moreover the experience of trummer frauen, of the woman of berlin that worked after the war, and other experiences, we have a semester in which we had to think about "what can we bring from this experience that can have a good sense and utility, and that is not already there?". Chile is not a country that is indifense and people are very clever; there are a lot of things, so we needed to be very selective, so we brought this and we put it into a test and what we brought back for the most part is something that is very fundamental for the students. The experiences of build objects, new technical knowledge, the understanding of how much you sweat when building and how much money it costs, how much time and effort. So when you do this experience your plans are never the same again (...). Further the reuse of materials has potential and we forced the limit of this by going to Haiti where we have seen the effects and the limits of this experience. In the case of Chanco we took all these things that had a heritage cultural value and in Haiti, instead, it was not the case of a very cultural thing, there was collapsed concrete, it was heritage in the more material sense. It is a different dimension of the same problem, so when we tested it in different sites we have seen the coincidence and the non-coincidence, so we could appreciate which was the core of the thing. We are starting working in Italy, in L'Aquila, and there are many coincidences, surprisingly i can see the same problems even if they are totally different countries and there are totally different contexts, with a very strong cultural context, there is a very massive operation, closure of the city, the political will, but all these things exist everywhere, (...), they happen with a different balance but you can recognize many continuous factors. Much of the learning is that these phenomena are one same nature, they happen and fault with different emphasis but they are the same thing basically.

Q: In Haiti what did you learn from the people of the city? Did they collaborate with you? A: This is an interesting thing because in the case of Chanco we worked among ourselves with the local government, the Municipality, and it had some advantages, but we never really interacted with the people of the city. We realized this and we decided that the next time we would work with the citizens. In Haiti it happened, and it was really a wonderful experience because we realized how committed people can be. When we started I thought that we were the main builders, the students and the volunteers. But in the end it was very different because the community started to collaborate seriously, it was an initiative for them to develop as an enterprise for building things. We worked together to build the first ten houses, and now they are continuing working by themselves, basically because they believed in the project, and this is quite a compliment for us. So we could leave the people and we could really trust that they go on with the project, even if they are not paid, and nevertheless they are investing their time to develop this project. So what we have learned is that given an opportunity, people are ready to seize it. The empowerment of the community, we didn't bring anything, not much money, we had a budget for materials, but nothing else. The rest we paid, organized events, fundraising, crowd funding, so in that we could contribute, but this was not something that was given to the workers, it was given to the families that were in the houses. Some of these were the same, but not all of them. (â&#x20AC;Ś) So now all of us, we here all over Europe and they in Haiti, are hoping and working for a second part of the project where we will continue to work more professionally, for a longer period, more houses, with a different model because it needs to be scaled up to make it cost efficient. So we are negotiating with an NGO to see if we can make an alliance so that they can help us administrate and apply for funding etc. etc. It's an ongoing learning process for us. Q: About the South American "Favelas", there is an element of material reclamation there, can you say

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something about that? A: Well Haiti is different from South America in places like Brazil. We have worked there too, with other projects, but in the state capital of Vitoria; they have favelas in a central but difficult site, we have partners who work there. (…) It's all about community development based on credit, and this credit is administered by the community and the community makes assemblies to make decisions, and for that our architect partners reuse a dump-yard and turn it into a Forum. And urban forum for the favela people to meet, and party and so forth, but also to make decisions and discussions in a more political sense etc. (…) Basically it is recovering the ground floor, and providing benches and things for the community to sit around etc. (…) You need to be creative to find the possibilities and identify the problems and turn them into an advantage for your purpose. Q: Are you going to organize some workshops/work camp where students of architecture can apply? Where can they find the information? A: Well we have several web pages. The main one is http:// www.reclaimingheritage.org/, the other one is http://www. rebuildhaitihomes.org/, we also have an indiegogo for that. We have another project in Ulan Bator in Mongolia, which is now building something there. And for the most part this has been a project of students from Berlin, but we are drifting a bit out of that and making it a bit longer, and this year for the first time we had a guest student from Valencia who had nothing to do with the university at all and somehow managed to get the funding and the "ok" from the university to come and do this workshop with us. (…) We are very open. As I tell you it is basically stopping to be just a student initiative and it's becoming a little NGO or foundation.

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Politecnico di Milano. School of Architecture and Society.

2014

MIAW

Do you know Roelof Verhage ?

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Roelof Verhage is lecturer and director at Institut d’Urbanisme de Lyon, Université Lumière Lyon 2. He is specialized in the areas of urban planning, economic approaches to urban planning and international comparisons. He’s a member of Association des Etudes Foncières and Labex Intelligences des Mondes Urbaines. He has conducted many researches that involves the installation of urban projects, the articulation between public, private and civil in development and urban regeneration and the possibilities and limits of the territorial planning, with special attention to issues related to land policy . These topics are often discussed in comparisons between European countries. He has worked in France and Netherlands; his research projects for local authorities, government departments and research bodies enabled him to publish in professional and scientific as well as in English literature, French and Dutch journals. He has conducted research projects, which enabled him to publish in professional and scientific as well as in English literature, French and Dutch journals.

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section W. Miaw 2014. Matteo Calati, Marina Curtaz, Lucrezia De Capitani, Leonardo Gatti, Giulia Lavagnoli, Margherita Napolitano, Azadeh Moradiasr, Clarissa Orsini, Saeed Rezaei, Claudia Scaravaggi, Yafim Simanovsky, Laura Solarino, Elizaveta Sudravskaya, Sun Zhi Xing. Guest Sébastien Marot Hosts Alessandro Rocca and Giovanni La Varra

It is here with us Roelof Verhage, a Dutch urban planner, who is also a professor and lecturer at the Urbanism Institute of Lyon. He is the guest of Section E, hosted by Corinna Morandi and Lina Scavuzzo.

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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 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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Politecnico di Milano. School of Architecture and Society.

2014

MIAW

Do you know Nicolas GILSOUL ?

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Nicolas Gilsoul is Grand Prix de Rome, architect, graduated in NaÂŹtural Sciences and Landscape Archi-tecture. With its office, based in Paris from 1996, he elaborated projects different countries getting many international awards. Since 1997 he has combined a business practice and a consulting over 18 countries in the field of architecture, urban landscape and exceptional gardens. His methods of combining film and prospective analysis on the future of cities is nowadays requested in Europe, Indian and Middle East. He is now teaching at the School of Fine Arts in Bruxelles and at the Ecole National Superieure du Paysage de Versailles.

http://miawspaper.wordpress.com/

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s a l iN co Feel the Landscape

2014

Q: How would you like to introduce yourself and your work, your projects with few words? If you would have to introduce yourself and your projects with few sentences which words would you like to use? Could you explain us your point of view on architecture and on the relationship between architecture and landscape, giving us also some tips or anticipations about the tonight’s lecture? A: Ok that’s a difficult question! Ok maybe it’s easy to start in this way… I’m an architect and a landscape architect and I’ve also a PhD in Sciences and actually those three things are coming together, are connected together in my works. Most of my works are landscape projects and here the idea is always to find the way to create a kind of hybrid between cities nature but, of course, not by paintings the walls in green but by using the natural dynamics. So tonight we will try to travel a lot together in Japan, in Africa, in Singapore, in India just to see how the cities are creating resilience strategies against the sea-level, river water-level, or against the climate change, the flooding areas, and so how can the landscape react to these phenomena? How can the landscape be modified? Q: Ok I will now ask you something not so general, or rather, more related to this workshop. As you may know, there’s a group of students working on the Lambro Park, here in Milan, and so I would like to ask you what do you think about it. Have you already been there? Is there anything that you would like to suggest to the student working on it? A: No, unfortunately, I haven’t been yet there, but that’s a very interesting place. And actually it’s interesting because I didn’t visit it yet, I just check on Google how it is and how it looks like trying to understand how it works. I saw a lot of polluted areas, post-industrial lots and it is very common in our

cities nowadays. I’ve been also working on a similar scenario with my students in Paris, and on the same question more or less: what can we do in this situation? What can we do with this kind of landscape? When I checked the Lambro Park on the internet I’ve seen some beautiful pictures of idyllic places and then just next those you find picture of horrible places with black water and of course the Lambro could overflow and that’s the interesting because we don’t know how to work with an area like this one, with so many problems and different situations. (I will tell you more after visiting it!) And it’s the same in India, it’s the same in Japan, in Africa. The city grows and while expanding it hurts somewhere, very often along rivers. Q: How can we solve this kind of problems with practical solutions? A: Actually I’m going to explain this tonight, but we can talk very shortly about it now. I found five strategies, if you find a sixth one, please just call me, because I would like to know it! The first strategy, that is becoming very common in Asian countries like China and Arabic Gulf, could be an ark, a boat, a sort of ship, creating a floating city but, of course, the problem would be that it would be just for few people only, for few rich people only! The second strategy is the wall, a sort of shield that you create to protect yourself, but this wall would never been high enough since the water can rise very high level, and then after a period this kind of board becomes the new topography itself creating new dunes and hills. The third strategy is not an object but is an action that we can do. We can try to divide the dynamic of the water and it’s flood and movements. This operation could be realise by re-shaping the river and making its flood slower. The fourth one is living on sticks, you could live on wooden sticks or concrete sticks or pillars and that’s very interesting in a landscape like the tropical area, for instance, because

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you create a new microclimate and you can play with it, modify it study it. And the last and fifth strategy is… mmm… I just forgot it! Aaah no, yes of course, the last one is sponge! You can absorb the water. But absorbing the water means creating a resilient lanscape like in the Rio Madrid, for instance, where you have a long one and it absorb all the rain water but also the overflow of the river. And of course you can combine those strategies together creating something new, like in a project I will show you tonight. It’s a project for the Tokyo Bay in Japan, in which we try to protect the bay against a huge amount of water in once, by combining together all these strategies we tried to protect the bay against tsunamis.

2014

What do the achitects talk about after a beer or two? Bicycles...and architecture!

Af t er the sun goes down MIAW

...Architecture is an obsession and nothing else... Haitam 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. http://www.archiprix.org/2015/index.php?project=3418 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 are 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".

2014

Smoke 'n 'talk with Haitham Nabil

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in the cube...

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MIAW 97

Politecnico di Milano. School of Architecture and Society.

http://miawspaper.wordpress.com/