collective, which won the competition). The final step concerned the implementation of the spatial project. The Largo Milano space was transformed in spring 2014 through a self-building workshop which involved, in addition to the designers of the Orizzontale collective, many inhabitants of Cinisello Balsamo as well as Architecture students coming from Departments of various Italian Universities. The project consisted in the creation of several multifunctional structures, which allowed to transform a transitional space into a proper public space that can be used by citizens as a meeting, playing and sharing location. It was built using mainly materials retrieved from construction sites, construction companies as well as material recovered from the dismantling of big events such as the Salone del Mobile. The staging is temporary, because in 2017 the PGT, Piano di Gestione del Territorio [Land Management Plan]) will be operative. It will include some important urban transformations in the Crocetta district. The tactical goal of the intervention by Orizzontale is to ensure that the PGT takes into account the new uses of the recovered space in Largo Milano.
Costruire Largo Milano is a project of transformation of a former parking lot of a car dealer shop, located in the Crocetta district in Cinisello Balsamo (Milan). It is the final step of a long participatory design process called ZAC - Zone Artistiche Condivise [Shared Artistic Zones], curated by Hubout, a creative lab focused on cultural projects based on the involvement of communities, cities and territories, located in Cinisello Balsamo. During the Spring-Fall 2013, for about six months, the ZAC project involved the residents and users of the space in a participatory art process that allowed to trigger a debate on the theme of art as a tool for community involvement in territory management, as well as its role within the democratic mechanisms that govern the relationship between citizens and institutions. The project consisted in several steps. One was collecting ideas from the bottom up (using a geodemocracy web platform where citizens were able to express and map wishes, ideas and their vision of the city). Another step consisted in forming artistic residencies and organizing a proposal for actions for the transformation of Largo Milano (several young creatives, active in the fields of art, architecture and design, were invited, including the Orizzontale 31