ARCHIVES OF MEMORY
The MIAW – Milan International Architecture Workshop – is the international intensive programme at the School of Architecture Urban Planning Construction Engineering. It provides an international design forum for schools, teachers and students, but it is also an informal platform to discuss issues and share ambitions that education implies. Its aim is to stimulate cross-over thinking between researches and practitioners in the design field, involving different scales and encouraging an interdisciplinary approach towards design problems. Each class has an International Guest Professor of high profile whose activity and interests are related to the different study courses and disciplinary areas characterizing all our school.
In the past editions, 2014 and 2015, MIAW studios worked on a series of abandoned buildings and areas of strategic interest for the municipality of Milan. In the 2016 edition, all the projects focused on the renovation and expansion of Leonardo Polimi Campus, on the base of a selection of sites which, inside or outside the actual boundaries, can be of great interest for the immediate future of our campus.
Last year MIAW tried to produce proposals for new-generation spaces and facilities, which could identify the best conditions for the educational habitats of the immediate future.
Instead, this year’s workshop aims to find the balance between memory and archives. Thanks to the support of the Comune di Milano with its Department of Digital Transformation and Civic Services and the Department of Culture, the workshop had the opportunity of focusing on major cultural realities in Milan (Triennale di Milano, Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano, Corriere della Sera), the five ateliers will work on a contemporary idea of a museum capable of interweaving the archival issues. Places of memory conservation in which the exhibition can become a device for a deeper knowledge of the city and of its culture.