The G124 mending plan por Giambellino, Milan How the urban planner job is likely to be in the next years

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1 Invierno _Planur-e ARTÍCULOS ISSN The G124 mending plan por Giambellino, Milan How the urban planner job is likely to be in the next years _ Chiara Valli chiaravalli00@gmail.com Chiara Valli, 36 years old, architect, expert in shared processes for urban Arquitecto, editor y consultor. Estudió Arquitectura en la Facultad de planning, social and environmental data mapping, data visualization and Arquitectura graphics design de for la Universidad information. Nacional With her Autónoma working group, de México Animali (UNAM), Sociali Periodismo Studio, she deals en la with Escuela spontaneous de Periodismo processes Carlos of reappropriation Septién García of y living una Maestría spaces by en the Análisis, inhabitants, Teoría by e facilitating Historia de the la relationship Arquitectura between en la UNAM. people Escribió and their para habitats. el periódico Within the Reforma, G124 s fue project editor she de was la revista in charge Arquine of the y consultor conception de of la tools Subdirección for the inhabitants General de inclusion Sustentabilidad of the into y Técnica the design del Infonavit. process, the Es organization autor de La utopía of working como groups modelo with y ha different editado stakeholders más de 20 in the neighborhood, graphic rendering and divulgation of technical libros sobre arquitectura, diseño, ciudad e infraestructura. Ha sido contents, data processing for the website. becario del Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (Conacyt) y de la Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. Actualmente She is recently been conducting urban research workshops in primary es becario del Programa Jóvenes Creadores del Fondo Nacional para la and secondary schools, with the purpose of providing reading and Cultura interpretations y las tools Artes and (FONCA), to favour coordinador the relationships de Sustentabilidad between young en Empresas citizens and ICA public y profesor spaces: de la one Facultad of these de Arquitectura surveys deals la with UNAM the y CENTRO. construction of an interactive map that will show the teenagers way of living in the city and will express their often ignored needs and expectations about urban spaces and mobility. Keywords Moreover, she s currently working with her studio on self-construction, reuse and space reactivation projects. In particular, Animali Sociali Studio is currently designing the new headquarters and hosting facilities of Cooperativa Lesignola in Canossa, Italy, an NGO operating in juvenile reception and treatment. The design process has been carried out with the NGO operators and guests active participation and was also intended as an educational path for the guests: in addition, as a further formative and professional training, the new housing facility will be built in by the older guests and by using a wood and hay technology. Outskirt, shared plan, public and private spaces relationship, mending path Abstract Team G124 takes its name from the number of Renzo Piano's office number in the Italian Senate s building, which was turned into a laboratory to plan the regeneration of the outskirts of the Italian cities. The team employs with an annual contract some young architects who are paid with Piano's parliamentary salary. The 2015 s project concerned the Giambellino area on the south-west outskirts of Milan, a working-class district built in the end of the 1930s, during the fascist period, a prime example in Italy, where most of public housing projects dates back to the 1940s-1950s. G124 s project for Giambellino could be an interesting case study for similar neighborhood and offer guidelines that could be adopted in other context. The most interesting perspective on fact-finding and proactive G124 s approach concerns the beginning of the inhabitants activation process in developing a shared project, as a possible future vision of their own habitat. G124 s designers have provided inhabitants the knowledge to shape their ideas and needs, that were revealed during a full immersion year of inclusive work, by proposing micro interventions which inhabitants can discuss with administrative offices, whenever City Council and Region financial resources are available. Starting from the apartments, staircases, passing by the courtyards, the plan includes the public park and connects to the city: the mending is a continuos and adaptable path that links every range in urban life, individual and domestic, neighborhood-centered, civic and collective.

2 2 ARTÍCULOS 08_Planur-e Invierno Introduction The G124, Senator Renzo Piano s work group on outskirts, formed by young architects with annual appointment, has the opportunity to choose a case study among italian cities: an unique privilege for an architect to choose the area and the customers. In 2015 the G124 s team was composed of architects Matteo Restagno, Alberto, Straci, Francesca Vittorelli and Chiara Valli, all under age 35, coordinated by the tutors Ottavio di Blasi e Marco Ermentini, with individual expertises from urban planning to restoration of modern architecture The urban and social context A short overview on social and urban dynamic on north italian outskirts and in particular Milan The outskirt of Milan, organized in 9 zones, offers an interesting range of urban settlement patterns, some already included in the fabric of the historic city (for example the public housing project Calvairate-Molise on south-east part of the city, built starting in the 1920s), others more recently built and not yet included and assimilated as a part of the city (like Gratosoglio, a neighborhood in the southwest, built during the 1960s) : the G124 group surveyed all of them before choosing the Giambellino neighborhood as case study. It has been a journey in space and time through Milan s outskirts that allowed us to observe the progressive dynamics of change in urban margins, the way the outskirts are assimilated or rejected by the consolidated city, the problem shared by all of the outskirts and those that are peculiar to single urban communities. In every neighborhood we visited there were inhabitants, associations and public services workers, actively involved in taking care of public spaces and meeting places, along with groups or small communities carrying out forms of social resistance against the crisis and several parts of the population that are particularly weak because of age, provenance and economical issues. In Giambellino the aspect of social activism and involvement was maybe the most significant one: we chose this neighborhood as a study area because it seemed to us a good observation point on gentrification and social change in the outskirts. In addition, the Giambellino s urban features make this neighborhood an example emblematic case in Italy, where most of public housing projects dates back to the 1940s s, years of the post war reconstruction. Migrants, young freelance professionals, students choose to live there, because of the high cost of downtown rent, and live side by side with the older inhabitants, who moved from southern to northern Italy during the post war internal migration. This phenomenon becomes an opportunity when it pertains to a neighborhood like the Giambellino with a strong historic identity, made of almost mythical personalities (like Vallanzasca, the criminal, who lived there in the 1960s) and songs (like La ballata del Cerruti Gino by Gaber, song writer and singer of life in the outskirts of the city). Figure 1. Historical view of the Giambellino and an aerial picture of the neighborhood

3 Invierno _Planur-e ARTÍCULOS 3 New kinds of inhabitants and ways of living bring knowledges and creative stimulus on the outskirt and together with the historical inhabitants, the associations and public services, they have given shape to new ideas on the functions of public spaces, on the underused residential and commercial buildings, on the microeconomics, and on cultural activities. My colleagues and I interacted with these phenomenons which are ongoing in north italian peripheries, collaborating over the year with several local groups and associations in the Giambellino: the traders association of shopkeepers in the public indoor market, who have fought to prevent the public market being changed into a private supermarket; the cultural association Dynamoscopio, founded by urban planners, sociologists and anthropologists who examine their own habitat; the public services workers who make the public library and the civic centre lively spaces; the inhabitants self-management committee that provides for the chronic shortcomings of Aler, the management institution for public housing in Milan. All of them actively participated on the design processing for their own neighborhood, bringing their knowledges and a lot of technical and practical informations, supporting us to identify the primary needs, but also the expectations: the bread and the roses, essential ingredients for a plan in which they could reflect themselves. Figure 2. A panoramic view of Piazza Tirana in the southwest part of the quarter Some details about the neighborhood The Giambellino-Lorenteggio neighborhood is located in the south-west area of Milan, 3 km away from the outer ring road, 5.6 km from the second ring and 6.4 km from the line of the old town s ancient walls. It develops along a north-south axes for more than 2 km, from Lorenteggio to Giambellino, linking Milan to the adjacent southern municipalities: the urban landscape gradually changes while going southbound through Lorenteggio, both in its building density and typological aspects. The neighborhood has a very favorable position; it s attractive for the real estate business; it s provided with several and important infrastructural axes, such as the new M4 Linate-San Cristoforo underground line, and it also enjoys the proximity of relevant urban transformation areas with an interesting functional mixture: as well as housing, there are services, tertiary, commercial and artisanal activities. Giambellino is located between an already deeply gentrified area, the Solari Tortona quarter, a branch of Salone del Mobile, and a recent big expansion area for executive and commercial buildings (Vodafone Village and Esselunga executive center). Figure 3. On the left a picture of Solari Tortona neighborhood, in the centre a writer wrote Giambellino resist! on a wall, on the right a picture of Vodafone Village skyline.

4 4 ARTÍCULOS 08_Planur-e Invierno 2016 Figure 4. Milan general infrastructural plan; in red, the Giambellino neighborhood. The area on which the quarter rises has an extension of about 134,000 sqm, with a built volume of 670,000 cu.m., equal to a buildability index of 5 cu.m./sq.m. The quarter was built between 1938 and 1944 as a public housing project, (IFACP, according to the italian acronym) fulfilling the housing needs of war veterans and the new migrants coming from southern Italy. Between the two avenues of Giambellino and Lorenteggio there are about 60 housing linear blocks, facing on wide courtyards and hosting about 6,000 inhabitants, of which 40% are foreigners, belonging to at least 20 different nationalities. Figure 5. The edge of the project area delimited by the red dotted line.

5 Invierno _Planur-e ARTÍCULOS 5 The smaller area we worked on includes the Aler residential cluster in the south (Aler is the regional management authority for public housing), the Parco Odazio green and service areas in the middle, which are surrounded by the public market, the library and the civic center, while in the north there is another housing cluster formerly belonging to the municipality and now managed by Metropolitana Milanese (the same quango that currently supervises the new underground line). Figure 6. An overview of the study area and its stakeholders Some details about the neighborhood The residences, of various types and sizes, are 2,700: quite reliable, or probably lower estimates count 520 vacant and 270 illegally occupied residences. A regional law, promulgated in the 50s and never modified, considers a dimensional minimum of 28 sqm for a residence: this restriction forbids the municipality and the authority to assign the lower-sized apartments. Because of more and more massive urbanization processes, the lack of housing policies for rent control, the residence assignment lists with restrictive requisites and blocked for years, a bad management of the public building assets by the authorities in charge, the Italian housing situation has become precarious. Unassigned apartments were occupied over the years to face situations of need, of which criminality took advantage by creating a squatting racket that forced needy families to pay up to 1,000 to get the doors opened and power, water and gas supply activated. To this phenomenon, the activity of spontaneous groups like the centri sociali (social centers as a literal translation: independent left wing movements) occupying and giving houses to the needy for free must be added, in a situation where their active contribution and good intents are likely to create even more chaos. Despite these serious problems, the urban, typological and material quality of Giambellino housing is really good and has good potential for further improvements and for being brought up to new legal standards and living demands. The perimeter and bearing walls of the buildings are 40cm thick and made of cross-bonded solid bricks, the bases are protected by grey beola (local building gneiss stone). The plaster is still in a good state, although it was set 70 years ago: no maintenance works were ever made throughout the years. Housing blocks of several lengths, up to 90m, are composed of from 2 to 6 staircases, without lifts. They are 16m high with 4 storeys, of which the ground floor is raised 1.2m from the courtyard level. With a courtyard width of 25 m, the proportion between height and distance of the facing buildings is optimal for the fruition of these semiprivate green spaces that were unfortunately subdivided over the years by fences built between one

6 6 ARTÍCULOS 08_Planur-e Invierno 2016 block and the other. The courtyards, following one another in a linear way and frequently interrupted by delimitations and fences, are very different one from another and might be considered as a mirror of the several typologies of inhabitants: the most carefully attended ones belong to the buildings or group of buildings that are self-managed by inhabitants committees like the one at 146, Via del Giambellino or belong to the building whose inhabitants have become owners, by redeeming their houses over the years. Figure 7. A map of the courtyard and park Odazio subdivision. In other courtyards, adjacent to buildings whose inhabitants are almost all abusive, garbage accumulates in a maze of inner rows and yards because of the many logistic problems in the sorted waste collection. The janitors can t supervise the entries, the postman can t find the right mailboxes among hundreds of overlapping and rubbed out plaques, and doorbell panels are broken and unreadable. Even the ambulances can hardly access the courtyards and, in general, the presence of several architectural barriers in the residences cause huge inconveniences to the elderly population (more consistent in percentage) and to use by children. Scarce permeability and accessibility of divided courtyards, favors illegal activity instead of restricting it: the construction site for the new M4 underground line, crossing Milan east to west, connecting Linate airport to Giambellino, and whose closure is due in 2022, worsens an already hard situation. The neighborhood is currently connected to downtown by bus line 14 with many detours due to the new underground line works; also car accessibility is currently restricted and Via Segneri residents are particularly affected because of the construction site s walls that are close to the facades and about 4 mts high. The same fragmented situation can be found in public spaces, like Parco Odazio, delimited in the north by the back parking lot of the market, in the south by the fenced garden of the library, and in the east by the MM

7 Invierno _Planur-e ARTÍCULOS 7 public housing blocks boundary: in the park there are more fenced areas, the heating station adjacent lot, an off leash dog area, and the civic center lot, mostly known as casetta verde (green little house). The park loses its spatial continuity because of many obstacles that limit use and security: the connections that might exist are limited by the orientation and position of the services, often inadequate and under-sized in relation to the many activities that are hosted there and indispensable to the neighborhood social fabric. Figure 8. Inner rows and courtyards. 2. The phases and content of the plan 2.1. The inclusion process, designing and direct involvement of inhabitants According to the G124 method, even more than designing itself, the process is the essential part: the approach to the quarter and its inhabitants, the survey of the needs expressed by the stakeholders (single or groups), the study of building priorities and social actions; in the end, the plan has been given back to the quarter and city during a neighborhood festival. Working in the social background previously illustrated, with multifaceted values and problems, required a prolonged phase of listening and observing and the organization of frequent meetings, divided in three content working groups, going on throughout the year: A working group on the indoor public market and its relationships with the neighborhood, collaborating with the traders association of shopkeepers which had already started a training for social responsibility of neighborhood business, thanks to the cultural association Dynamoscopio, located in the indoor market; A working group composed of the citizens services, public library and civic centre, collaborating with the local associations network and with the public services workers dealing with several social areas; A working group on housing and shared courtyards, working with inhabitants committees and the new forms of self-management, spontaneously born in a lack of maintenance and social fragmentation context. The participatory phase and the design one, have flowed into one another, returning to the several participating subjects the results of the surveys and discussing together the planning choices as the result of the working groups: this fact permitted all the stakeholders being strongly connected with the plan, giving their own continuous contribution to the designing process and recognizing themselves in it. Discussing with the inhabitants and associations on the future of their neighborhood means starting a debate on different point of views and development scenarios: what finally came up was a need for a balance between the strong popular identity of the neighborhood and a recognition of the changes going on in social fabric and gentrification pushes, coming from the external context and likely to increase the rents and force the inhabitants to move.

8 8 ARTÍCULOS 08_Planur-e Invierno 2016 Figure 9. Some of the graphic tools used in the inclusion process. The plan, designed with inhabitants, proposed by G124 consists of: pedestrian connections through the shared courtyards that guarantee better accessibility and porosity of the spaces, especially the interaction between different housing cultures;

9 Invierno _Planur-e ARTÍCULOS 9 advanced diagnostics and light interventions of energy performance upgrade and renovation for dwellings; in this way the tenants can stay in their own apartments during the work in progress; small external built additions for service buildings (civic centre, public library and indoor public market) to achieve full functionality, sparing endless construction sites that could deprive the community of services essential for their living standards; in order to resolve the problem of under-sized lodgings, we propose to assign them to students away from home or to young professionals working from home to facilitate a social mix as a changing enzyme in micro economics dynamics. In November 2015 the G124 group organized an happening day, Giambellino Calling, to illustrate the plan to the city: during this day the drawings explaining the plan were set up in the indoor market, where, thanks to a small self-financing building intervention, we succeeded in opening a new entrance to the Odazio park and realizing an external platform for summer use. By participating to Giambellino Calling, the associations and public services managed to let the citizens know about their daily activities in the quarter and to create a network with other similar organizations. In order to involve also young inhabitants into the happening day, sport, writing and hip-hop contests were organized in the Odazio public park spaces. Figure 10. External platform by market backyard (left), the drawings set up in the market (right) Figure 11. Presentation of the project in a courtyard (left), signals used to explain the project (centre and right) In the courtyards G124 handed out to the inhabitants a Recommendations Handbook, a small publication that describes technical and materials details of their own houses with the aim to spread information about their residential buildings values and to give advice for do-it-yourself renovation projects: this kind of activity could support a micro local business and a form of integration income, by bypassing the long procedures of public tenders, that, indeed, implicated 70 years of lacked maintenance.

10 10 ARTÍCULOS 08_Planur-e Invierno 2016 The purpose of the happening day, as the final phase of the inclusion process, were: setting out the plan as a result of different voices" of the neighborhood and the human and urban resources unexpressed so far; prefiguring the planned proposals, by testing for a day the hybrid use of the public and semi-public spaces; giving back to the inhabitants the plan with the purpose to present it to the council members in charge, in order to make the already allocated investment for the neighborhood s regeneration more effective. Figure 12. Excerpts from the Recommendations Handbook The neighborhood scaled mending project We called the neighborhood scale project mending plan: an east to west ideal itinerary that starts from the new underground station in Via Segneri and crosses the courtyards, removing separations and reactivating the ground floors with functions designed for the residents (laundries, kindergartens, meeting points, library branch services); by passing through Via Odazio it intersects the rear of the current market, making it a new access point from the park side, connecting it to the other existing functions library and civic center continuing through the MM (Metropolitana Milanese) housing block and ending by Parco Gelsomini underground station, currently under construction. The studies carried out on pedestrian mobility by Studio Systemica in Milan demonstrate that this route would considerably reduce travel and crossing time within the neighborhood, especially during the underground station construction phase, favouring accessibility and security for categories of inhabitants such as elderly, young people and children. Furthermore, removal of courtyard fencing, proper path lighting and the development of green areas selfmanagement, would favour the cohabitation of residents and improve security, avoiding the micro-criminality spots these spaces are suffering. The planning proposal is supposed to enhance the accessibility to staircases from the courtyards by creating 5 mts wide private pertinences aside the path, in which recycling bins, bike storage and unit doorbells could be placed.

11 Invierno _Planur-e ARTÍCULOS 11 Figure 13. The mending plan. This simple intervention could solve many of the observed problems, like the difficulties in mail delivery or waste collection, obtaining an improvement in residence management. Raised ground floors could be partly used as service spaces for the housing and as a filter between the street front on Via Segneri and the permeabile courtyards in the back. According to the plan, Parco Odazio is going to be the quarter s green square, crossed from east to west by the mending path coming from Aler housing cluster and running by the rear of the market, while in the north-south direction it would be crossed by a serviced path connecting market, library and civic center. In order to create this last connection it is necessary to remove park fencing, by moving the dog area to the side of the heating plant and thus obtaining a sports area, a basketball court and a skatepark. Figure 14. Detail of the mending paths.

12 12 ARTÍCULOS 08_Planur-e Invierno 2016 As a functional improvement of the existing services, the project also includes external addition in light building technology. The southern side of the market will be provided with an extendible structure for summer use, to be built on the platform facing the park and includingactivities of cultural associations, a temporary shop and spaces equipped with kitchen and restrooms. In a visual connection with the platform, on the other side of the park, a new entrance and the new childrens section will rise by the north side of the library. On the west side, there will be new restrooms compliant with standards, while on the east side facing the civic center, an audiovisual section with independent entrance will be able to offer its service outside the daily hours of the library. For the civic center, the planned interventions on the south side are a covered external area for summer barbecues and a small storage/workshop shed, while on the east side, an extension will be built as an addition to a fitness gym. Figure 15. Overall courtyard organization (above), a detail of the entrances to the courtyards (below).

13 Invierno _Planur-e ARTÍCULOS 13 Figure 16. The paths in the Parco Odazio with the new functions.

14 14 ARTÍCULOS 08_Planur-e Invierno Advanced diagnostics and light interventions of upgrade and energy performance renovation for dwellings In order to solve the dimensional, qualitative and energy deficiencies of the residential buildings, we proposed an intervention capable of facing at the same time all of these levels of criticality. The intervention consists in connecting a 3m thick equipped block, containing the lifts, to the facades on the courtyard side. This equipped block also includes the entrances of the apartments on an external walkway: this intervention permits increasing the terrace surfaces and the relocation there of bathrooms (currently too small), in order to free the apartment layout from bathrooms, thereby increasing the living areas. Figure 17. A section showing the courtyard with new private access spaces. This external block, which will also include a service duct, can be realized without moving inhabitants from their houses during the works: the procedure of moving people during renovation works, generally long-lasting interventions, entails considerable social and economical costs for the local administration. In cooperation with the Advanced Diagnostic Lab of the Fine Arts Academy of Santa Cecilia in Brescia, coordinated by engineer Dario Benedetti, we experimented with a portable diagnostic kit on residential buildings in Giambellino: we could carry out screen tests on thermal behavior of constructional bonds and on the walls and realize a survey of chemical properties of every single external cladding material. This scientific approach, that promotes focused interventions for the building care, reveals that demolition and reconstruction are often more onerous than the planning of accurate maintenance interventions, unlike what is usually believed by building professionals. The method consists of these phases: mapping the materials of all the buildings to identify macro-categories on which to perform effecting chemical analysis in the laboratory;

15 Invierno _Planur-e ARTÍCULOS 15 chemical and physical characterization of the materials through X-ray defraction (XRD) to define possible deterioration phenomenons; taking of samples in situ through IBIX Mobile Lab to analyze the moisture using the ponderal method (UNI 11085), and the analysis of soluble salts on rock materials; defining a diagnostic plan for the organized maintenance using Mobile Lab Program. Figure 18. Portable diagnostics kit (left), samples taken from residential buildings (right). The results of the survey demonstrate that the residential buildings have a good quality of materials and cladding, with the possibility of accurate restorations. In general, the energy behavior reveals thermal dissipation only in the terrace bonds: this last aspect could be upgraded by the external addition of the equipped block formed by sandwich panels with high insulating performance. Figure 19. Thermal behavior of a building facade.

16 16 ARTÍCULOS 08_Planur-e Invierno The outcomes of the project and the choices of the public administration The plan developed by G124 during 2015 has been presented to many institutions in charge, each one with a specific and limited area of competence, but it encountered many difficulties in the acceptance by the institutions: the fragmentation of competencies, combined with poor communication between different departments and offices, makes the coordination complicated and prevents the implementation of a unitary plan with an overall view. We have turned to several institutions in charge, interested in the plan: the Area 6 office (the municipality of Milan is divided in 9 Areas) the Housing and Social Policies Department the Public Green Areas and Maintenance Department the Cultural Services and Public Libraries Department the School Offices of different levels Aler, the regional maintenance institution for public social housing the quango Metropolitana Milanese, that manages the public infrastructures, the integrated water service and the municipality s social housing. It should be pointed out that, at the moment of choosing the Giambellino neighborhood as case study, G124 was not aware of the Public Administration s intention to make a public resources investment for the regeneration of that area. During 2016, Municipality of Milan and Lombardy Region allocated 80 millions funds for the restoration of the quarter and they started the social support for the intervention plan. Unfortunately, the italian public tenders procedure only admits large interventions and assignments to companies with a sizable income, in contrast with the innovative G124 s approach. Because of the bad governance and the scarce maintenance of the public real estate, nowadays there is an emergency situation: as many as 12 of the 80 millions funded by public institutions will be paid for asbestos removal on the residential roofs. This kind of intervention could be gradually realized with an efficient and continuing maintenance that could prevent the repositioning of hundred inhabitants. The new mayor, in office since 2016 and former Expo 2015 Single Commissioner, made his first political speech in the Giambellino s civic centre and he promised a political season with particular care to the needs of peripheries. In reality, the current administration s approach to the peripheries turned out to be quite different from what G124 had proposed: for a city council whose governance direction is attached to big events implementation, a project made by small mending interventions and use of light building technologies for service improvement does not seem efficient for that which concerns impact towards media and political communication. Instead of expanding the existing library to which inhabitants are really attached, the Municipality of Milan will build up a new 1,000sqm library, reducing the Parco Odazio s green areas and risking ending up with a barelymanaged facility with an already insufficient personnel. The great interventions the Municipality has scheduled in Giambellino, together with the underground line construction, will make this neighborhood a huge construction site that is likely to last at least 7 years, with much inconvenience to residents, the risk of losing the social fabric, neighborhood s real richness, and a probable considerable rise in rents, likely to provoke an homologation to already gentrified districts in close vicinity. G124 proposed good institutional intervention practices that can be carried out in several contexts, but for now Italian governance authorities don t seem to be ready to put them in practice and to change their way to look at peripheries, along with the will to operate and invest money in these parts of the city.