The MIAW-Milan International Architecture Workshop, an international intensive programme at the School of Architettura e Società, 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 characterising all our school.
The general framework of all MIAW2015 workshops is “Reforming Milan”, a joint initiative taken by the School of Architettura e Società and the Municipality of Milan to foster/strengthen the collaboration between the school and the city aiming at improving the quality of its environment. Within this framework, the specific subject or theme exploited by the workshop will be defined by each Guest Professor in charge.
The initiative follows the path of the commitment of the School of Architettura e Società to be a place of preparation and experimental design on the issues of the city of Milan and its metropolitan area. Selected areas and buildings have been reported by the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies and represent a majority of cases recently surveyed because they are in very poor conditions. They are therefore representative of a phenomena of sale, underuse, abandonment of buildings and areas, whether public or private owned, of different size, texture, type. The phenomena affects the city of Milan with a strong negative impact on the quality of life of the urban areas in which they are located and this is of one the main reasons to devote our design energy on these topics.