Co-evolution between space, nature, and society. The Milanese fringes: Porto di Mare as a case study

From Firenze University Press Journal: Ri-vista

Kevin Santus
Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Urbani, Politecnico di Milano

Stefano Sartorio
Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Urbani, Politecnico di Milano

Arianna Scaioli
Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Urbani, Politecnico di Milano

Peripheries, where urbanity transitions to rurality, are spaces of conflict and expulsion (Sassen, 2014). Their intermediate area characteristics, between an urban fabric and a rural one, have become uncertain over time, producing a low-density settlement, with a continuous exchange of relations and intrusions between these two entities, and where the territory assumes the characters of both (Mininni, 2013).The aspect of “rurbanity”, which merges the characteristic of rural ecologies and the urban ones, connotates the fringe areas shared by the two juxtaposed environments, generally limiting each other in the expression of both the agricultural urban po-tential (Firey, 1946). The invasion operated by hu-man settlements, brown fields, and industries mix-es with the agro-productive site, turning a territory of farms and crops into the rurban fringe, in which the two anthropic and natural ecologies co-exist. This condition of vagueness (De Solà-Morales, 1996) that stems from consolidated dualisms — wild-domestic, productive-unproductive, urban-rural — reducing reality to a more comprehensible and imaginable entity, has severely influenced the spatial, social and economic development of these places. It produces “waste also in terms of landscape: abusive and dense buildings, spaces without qual-ity, without accessibility, without porosity, without identity.” (Russo, 2018, p. 42), affecting the composition of the territory.

The topic of territorial fragilities in fringes (Fontanella, 2021) brings forward a synthetic approach that seeks to mend the traditional gap between wilder-ness and urbanity, society and nature. Here the contribution proposes to recast the discipline of architecture as a creative mediation tool, encompassing the notions of co-existence and co-evolution with-in the territorial relationship between urbanity and rurality, reaching an intermediate scale of action. The complexity of these themes, together with the climate crisis (Bulkeley, 2013), and the urgency of a renovation wave prompted by the European Green Deal, brought the European Union to propose a cul-tural and interdisciplinary initiative able to give an impulse to the built environment transformation. The New European Bauhaus (NEB) is a framework that considers a harmonious relationship with na-ture, the environment and people at its core (Euro-pean Commission, 2021). In a holistic perspective, the initiative proposes three pillars for the founda-tion of the contemporary transformation. These pillars are expressed by the NEB slogan “beauti-ful, sustainable, together”: “beautiful”, in terms of spatial quality and aesthetic beyond functionality; “sustainable”, referring to the climate change goals and resource use; while and “together” gives value to inclusivity and affordability.

They could gener-ate a set of values from which to look at the trans-formation of the project, in a multi scalar and crea-tive perspective, from the single architecture to the landscape. Approaching this framework, the city’s fringes could constitute a fertile ground for design experimentations, generating structural transformations to face the rising environmental and social crises. Accordingly, the NEB objectives shall possibly inform and implement the co-evolutionary project with a renewed attitude and sensibility. The aim of the contribution is to bring forward a theoretical and design-driven reflection on co-evolution, as a potential for urban fringe regeneration. It frames the authors’ position — through a design experimentation — on the possible impact of the NEB framework for the design practice and theory, in the possibility of regenerating neglected fragments, reconnecting with nature and restoring social relationships. Specifically, the focus is on Porto di Mare, in the southern fringe of Milan, which is configured as a polluted industrial site between the city and the countryside.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/rv-13328

Read Full text: https://oaj.fupress.net/index.php/ri-vista/article/view/13328