RECENT PROJECT’S PROPOSAL STUDY AND CRITICS

Foster & Partners were asked to design a sustainable and smart district of Milano Santa Giulia, in which the masterplan consists of different facilities from museum, residential buildings, sports arena, commercial buildings, businesses and offices, and leisure facilities.

Following such masterplan, we highly analyzed the proposed urban planning, and we were able to highlight different factors and elements which we believe must be revised. Such critics and considerations will later help us to design a different masterplan, consisting of same facilities; however, with better linkage and architectural considerations.

The intervention favors relations with the rest of the city and the metropolitan area. The extension of the Paullese road increases the connection towards the city center and connects the district with the eastern ring road. However, the initial idea was to join the two parts of Santa Giulia, rather than keeping them split as they were in origin. However, the large green public area, Santa Giulia Park, is located right in the center of the plan, favoring a greater division of the areas of Montecity to the north and Rogoredo to the south to the detriment of the unity that the plan envisaged. The proposed park does not function as a connecting landscape within different facilities and buildings, yet it is a large green area with no facilities to interact with.

What the plan does not consider as well is the evolution in Milan’s morphology of buildings and districts. The farther we get from the center, the more openness, and light buildings we observe. Such strategy was not applied in the masterplan, as it was compact, and the buildings are designed to be closed-up with bringing back the original courtyard concept between different parcels blocks. Such scenario does not favor the vision which Milan is trying to achieve, an open community allowing more spaces for greenery within buildings and dynamic spread of structures with organic pathways. What has been proposed acts as an exclusive neighborhood with a discontinuity from the surroundings.

Another important element that we should highlight on is the negligence of the importance of the boulevard which extends from Rogoredo FS and crosses all the constructed part of Santa Giulia. In the current scenario, the boulevard was not extended in the same width nor given the same importance as an axis of accessibility; it would lead to nowhere until it crosses the whole park to reach a certain function.

And finally, the sports arena, which is our main concern, is designed at the very edge of the district with no linking with the park nor with an important railway infrastructure, Rogoredo FS. The arena is placed at the borders of the master plan, facing the street, without a main plaza where fans can gather, nor with a green area acting as sports park. It was left as a secondary element of treatment, rather than the main element in which the masterplan is designed around, as we have seen in the previous analysis. Its location is badly connected with public transportation and totally disconnected and segregated from the park; meanwhile, it has a strong linking connection with the surrounding shops and commercial buildings rather than with the community itself.

Total disconnection and absence of relation between the arena and the park is obvious in such masterplan. Moreover, the arena is located far away from Rogoredo and not benefiting from such an important railway infrastructure.

Abandon of the existing main boulevard of Santa Giulia, in which its width decreases progressively as it starts from the park. This shows the discontinuity between the southern constructed part and the northern part in its main elements.

The main park acts as a seperation element rather than a unification which binds and connects all of Santa Giulia districts. It is design and left as a large green area with no facilities to interact with.