Monolith
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cimitero monumentale
porta nuova \ garibaldi
porta volta
porta nuova
piazza della repubblica
arena civica
castello sforzesco
foro bonaparte
piazza duomo
stazione centrale
teatro alla scala
pinacoteca di brera
galleria v.emanuele II
Spanish Walls
01_threshold 02_measure 03_rhytm
04_infrastructure 05_web of services 06_development (?)
Traces
Centripetal City
PathsProject Axes
Axis of Continuity - Concept Axis of Fragmentation - Concept
Centrifugal City
Francesco Ronchi - 736540
I D E N T I T YTo act in a metropolitan city, as can be seen
Milan with his own hinterland, which through
the ages has always played a major role and that
it was also the subject of radical changes in the
political, economic, administrative and social
field which inevitably impacted on the urban
sphere, needs a level of investigation and re-
flection on the urban scale before architectu-
ral one, especially if the project represents a
key point in the urban mesh. The plot is loca-
ted along the ancient Spanish Walls, whose
construction began immediately after the me-
dieval period, and was therefore by a historical
point of view an area strongly marked as a th-
reshold, an urban entrance to the city. Nowa-
days fully divested in favor of the realization of
a first ring road, is embedded in the radial
tissue of Milan as a second line of demarcation
between the first ring of walls and the road
bypass.Comparing a reconstruction of the
original city wall with what we consider the
trace (well recognized) that this has left within
the urban mesh of Milan, it is clear as it has
always played a dual role,a fence from the
inside to which the development is done with
patterns typical of the old town and, from the
outside firstly as a threshold and then as a cor-
nerstone of modern urban developement.
The intent to search for a new genius loci arises
from the behavior of the first round of the
walls. As we can see before the total demoli-
tion, these, together with a few main roads,
have regulated urban development, providing
with rhythms and measures the mesh, while
after the demolition this function has failed
according to a shift of the main axes in behalf
first of axes infrastructure (roads, rail,
subway) and recently of the axes of services.
Obvious fact is the tendency to post-modern
patterns of development, acting within the
dense and layered tissue, creating gaps in
which place these services to create new pola-
rities on which set a new urban mesh, that ho-
wever often characterize themselves as empty
and self-referred, massified, globalized and
gentrificated. These new polarities also relates
to a centrifugal model of the city, which aims
at a sprawled urbanism, in contrast with the
centripetal model of the historic city. The
project area is now like “no man's land” betwe-
en two strong axialities, a historical one that
links Cimitero Monumentale to the historical
center and the cathedral through Porta Tena-
glia and the other one that intercepts the Porta
Nuova area tracing out axis that unites many of
the interventions for EXPO2015 (City Life,
Portello, Cascina Merlata,Expo Area ..) in
NW direction; hence the aim of redefining a
new border and an identity now lost.
"Today , the attributes that made threshold in-
termediary and passage have been removed,
and so threshold is a distinctive motive betwe-
en interior and exterior, between confined re-
gions and broad extensions, between closed
and open places. Here it returns as a crest of
form, and also line of force, a mark of con-
densations and a consolidated ‘nervous
system’ which render it a ‘place of remarkable
places’. In the conplex dwelling, threshold op-
poses the crossing of undifferentiated space,
which is spread out and undecipherable, in-
terposing surroundings and accumulations
which can be recognised on a scale of charac-
teristic and intersecting relations. If the an-
cient accepted meaning is reversed, then the
very dividing elements will become connective
so as to reinforce the sustaining frameworks of
a larger transformation. An analogy is postu-
lated between ‘threshold’ an ‘outline’, both of
which are borderline states of the form that
demarcates varied fields, critical situations of
heterogeneous regions,where the condensa-
tions ossifying the dwelling hold out against
the disintegration of the dwellings restoring a
matrix to these. The modern avant-garde -
antagonist of the exhaustive urban grids - in-
dicates this phenomenon when models of
urban condensation are proposed: the tecto-
nic threshold becomes a local specification of
entire urban systems and it is opened up to the
principle of ‘sequence’. This sequence is not a
succession of multiple doorways, but rather a
four-dimensional relation of the settlement
fragments in the contemporality of space-ti-
me. The sequential redefining of threshold
draws out the fifth dimension, the memory di-
mension, which today is the critical line resi-
stance against ‘media’ superimposition and
the resulting ‘cultural’ deletions."(S.Crotti)
Have been identified two main design axis
with profoundly different features; an axis
of penetration in SE direction, the axis of
continuity, which opens a rhythmic succes-
sion of orderly open spaces, and an axis of
flowing EW, axis of the fragmentation, that
following the traces of the ancient Spanish
walls, it inherits their disruption.