Ex-scalo Farini: urban/architectural/landscape strategies for a resilient Milano

“There are things that I do not like in this world, I could be ironic, but I am very careful no to be”

[Guido Guidi]

ARCHITECTURAL THINKING AND CLIMATE CHANGE/URBAN RESILIENCE
This design workshop encourages a role for architects as operative strategic figures aiming to integrate complex systems, competing needs and seemingly polarized aims, therefore leading to innovative and provocative combinations of program, siting, and built form where outcomes can be far reaching, addressing issues beyond the traditional domain of the building and/or individual object. How and where people live, work, produce their food, share community activities, participate into the world from their specific places and how these solutions interact with the natural environment must be re-thought to combine sustainable social and environmental solutions. These issues land at the feet of traditional concerns of architecture: land use and urbanization, big and small systems and relationships. What role can architecture play?
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Mauro Baracco is a practising architect and a director of Baracco + Wright Architects (B+W), Melbourne, Australia. He graduated from Turin Polytechnic and has a PhD in architecture from RMIT University where he is an Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Design in the School of Architecture and Design. He was formerly the Deputy Dean of Landscape Architecture (2013-2015) and is currently the Deputy Dean of International – both at RMIT University. Mauro is a member of RMIT’s School of Architecture and Design executive committee and d___Lab/Centre for Design Practice Research through which he leads consulting projects in partnership with industry and government bodies, some of which undertaken in collaboration with international architecture schools and cultural institutions, including the School of Architecture, Urban Planning and Construction Engineering of Milan Polytechnic where in 2016 he was invited to lead a Master design studio focused on the urban regeneration of the town of Imperia, Liguria, Italy. His research is focused on urban resilience through cross-programming and integration of open and built space, spanning from large/territorial to small/acupuncture scales. Mauro’s projects and writing have been widely published in books and journals (Domus, Abitare, Casabella, A+U, Transition, Architecture Australia among others), exhibited and awarded, and presented at conferences and symposia, both nationally and internationally

Oliver Thill (Karl-Marx-Stadt – East Germany, 1971) studied at the TU Dresden in Germany.
He is a founding partner of the Rotterdam based firm Atelier Kempe Thill, which he directs together with André Kempe since 2000. The office has currently about 25 employees and is working on a variety of public building projects in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland and Morocco. The office has received several international awards among the Bauwelt Prize (2003), Detail Award (2005+2009), Rotterdam – Maaskant Prize (2005), AM-NAi Award, NL (2010), the Dutch Architect of the year award, NL (2011) and the Ugo Rivolta Award (2013). In 2012 the German publisher HatjeCantz published the first monograph about the work of the office. In 2017 HatjeCantz published the book “Atelier Kempe Thill – Villa Urbaine”.

Oliver Thill has been engaged as studio master at the Delft University of Technology, the Academie van Bouwkunst in both Arnhem and Rotterdam and the Berlage Institute
Rotterdam and Delft. He has been an invited professor at the EPF Lausanne and the PBSA Düsseldorf. Currently he teaches together with André Kempe as a professor at the TU Berlin.

Oliver Thill has given more than 100 public lectures worldwide. He was a board member
of the Jaap Bakema Foundation Rotterdam en writes on a regular basis for the European architecture magazine “San Rocco”. Currently he is member of the advisory board of the Academie van Bouwkunst Rotterdam.

Cities and their hinterlands are critical engines of national economies – more agile and able to control their environment than the nation state. Milan – Italy’s economic driver – is clearly one of Europe’s prime cities with a vast and interdependant productive hinterland. At the crossroads of Europe, the city has key strategic connections to global trade.

The idea of the nation state – seemingly in decline since the second half of the last century – has recently found new vigour. With the reappearance of Nationalism, progressive urban areas have found themselves on the defensive as the hinterland votes for protectionist trade rules and insularity. In contrast to this introspection, China has been exploring a reinstatement of the ancient Sino-European Silk Road. Last month a freight train completed the 12,000km journey from east China’s Yiwu City to London.
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Tom Holbrook came to architecture tangentially, co-founding 5th Studio in 1997 as a spatial design agency, working across the fields of architecture, urban design, infrastructure and landscape.

Tom completed a PhD at RMIT in 2014. His thesis – Expanding Disciplinarity in Architectural Practice: Designing From the Room to the City – was published by Routledge in 2016, and proposes a generalist approach to architectural practice.

In combination with practice, Tom is Professor of Architecture and Industry Fellow at RMIT University, based in Melbourne & Barcelona, and he directs the Urban Studies programme at the London School of Architecture. Tom taught for ten years at the University of Cambridge Department of Architecture and has been an external examiner at London Metropolitan University and the MARCH school, Moscow.

Tom also contributes to teaching at the London School of Economics Cities Programme and at Central St Martins; he regularly contributes critical writing and opinion to a variety of media. Tom is a member of the Design Panel for High Speed Two, – the UK’s high speed rail project – and for the London Olympic Legacy Development Corporation.

[CopyrightEdithRoux_CourtesyEditorialeLotus]

Just Like Starting Over
Since 2014, every Miaw edition focused on a specific area, theme or question related with the architectural and urban transformation of Milan, so that the outcoming projects were a relevant contribution for a vision of the future city.
In this edition 2017, Miaw studios will concentrate around a strategic urban area, the Farini rail yard (about 618.000 sqm) which, in the next future, will be abandoned by the railways state company and converted to urban usages.
In these months, there is an ongoing large discussion about Farini and other minor six rail yards in Milan, a total area of 1.250.000 sqm, and the railways company is now running a private consultation asking five architects to investigate possible future urban scenarios for these seven sites.
Considering size, complexity and the long lasting of the full urban transformation of Farini, we address the Miaw studios to think of pioneering projects which can start, but not complete, the site’s recovering. We think of projects which can explore and reveal new possibilities and scenarios, without, because this is the state of the art, any general layout.
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MIAW 2017 23FEB-4MAR 2017
MILANO FARINI RAIL YARD Just Like Starting Over
PDF General Program

WS 01 – Aula O.2
EVERYTHING NATURE
Mauro  Baracco
PDF Program > WS 01

WS 02 – Aula III.A
WHO MAKES THE CITY?
Luis Basabe Montalvo
PDF Program > WS 02

WS 03  – Aula Z.1
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE WALL COMES DOWN?
Liza Fior
PDF Program > WS 03

WS 04  – Aula O.2.1
ENTREPRENEURIAL CITY
Tom Holbrook
PDF Program > WS 04

WS 05  – Aula III.D
A PARK IN SCALO FARINI
Olav Kristoffersen
PDF Program > WS 05

WS 06  – Aula O.1
TEMP
Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli
PDF Program > WS 06

WS 07  – Aula III.C
THE BIG ENSEMBLE
Oliver Thill
PDF Program > WS 07