LAST EDITIONS: 2010-2011- 2012











TEMA
Reuse sites – Regenerate spaces – Recuperate potential.

The fourth edition of Politecnico di Milano OC summer school focuses on the critical and problematic issue of the transformation of the contemporary city. Design will be focused on the urban spaces, the proposing forms and functions that renew a balance between artificial and natural. Piacenza however is characterized by a strong presence of low density, under-utilized ares, without a strong character or identity. Many of which are abandoned military areas, “in-between” areas without a present day use use or clearly defined future. By balancing ‘’between growth and de-growth’’ as an approach to design, the students would identify the relation between the nature and the city referring to the ‘’Common Ground’’ the theme proposed by David Chipperfield in the latest Venice Biennale. We will attempt to reject the easy labels and simplifications that our society tends to propose (the city "smart" or slow, or, on the other hand, the indiscriminate use of technology as the only recognized sustainable models), and instead forge a new path, passing through a complex set of interacting elements such as those shown in the slogan of Expo Shanghai 2010 ‘’best city for a better life’’. The OC 2013 propose three main starting points for design considerations:

- Implement a slow mobility system (pedestrian and cycling paths), not just with the aim of proposing fragmented interventions for some urban areas, but creating new urban geography through a new model of mobility.

- Adopt a concept that identifies the innovative city as the city that regenerates itself, referring to the KM0 food centre that used new technologies and has a high social content.

- Achieve a sequence of new interior landscapes and found places, where the qualities of the landscape (natural, semi-natural, artificial) and the architectural elements work together.