Call for participation Call for Participation
24-30 June, 2015 Organized by Content Partner Cascina Corte San Giacomo, Milano With the patronage: With the support of Institutional Sponsor
INTRO The workshop aims at developing a toolbox for the reuse whether durable or temporary - of vacant buildings in industrialized cities, chiefly Milan: by doing so, it aims at focusing its efforts on strategies which enable both municipal public and private stakeholders to push such reactivation processes. In order to give the workshop a concrete and defined subject of research, focuses on vacant municipal farmhouses, and deals with two intertwining topics: on the one hand, the agricultural heritage of the territory of Milan, and the contemporary issues related to the agricultural production, food security and metabolism of European cities on the other. To realize this goal, New Generations is inviting architects, planners and policy makers together with agronomists, economists and urban scientists to form a multidisciplinary team. This think-tank will be comprised of max. 24 MA / PhD students and young practitioners divided into three teams, each addressing a specific topic of investigation: each group will collaborate in generating strategies to foster the role of these vacant buildings in the Milanese periphery and in addressing the issue of those yet to be conceded, providing and prioritizing space for social, cultural, technological experimentations open to citizen initiatives or entrepreneurial endeavor. New Farms fo Expo is an initiative organized by the Cultural Association New Generations with the support of the Dutch Embassy and the General Consulate in Milan, the Municipality of Milan, Fondazione Cariplo, the Board of Architects of Milan and Associazione Cascine Milano. New Generations is looking for highly motivated MA / PhD students or young practitioners in the field of Architecture, Design, Urban Planning and Studies, Engineering, Agronomy and Economics from all around Europe to join a week of workshops and confrontations in Milan, from June 24 to June 30. Selected students will collaborate side-by-side in a multidisciplinary workshop led by a Italian-Dutch think-tank. The group of tutors will see the participation of architects and planners, agronomists, communicators, economists and engineers. Experts in urban regenerations will be called to join the workshop, following step-by-step each group of participants during the entire week of activities. Furthermore, many other international guests will take part in the three public sideevents.
USEFUL INFORMATION Workshop Registration Multi-Disciplinary Promotion Participation Program for selected participants 1 April / Registration opens 26 April / Early Bird Registration closes 18 May / Late Registration closes 25 May / Publication of the list of selected participants Attendance fee 80 Early Bird Registration Between 1 April and 26 April 2015 120 Late Registration Between 26 April and 5 May 2015 To foster interdisciplinarity and collaboration during the workshop, the organization has decided to promote (through a 50% reduction of the participation fee) paired registration: each pair must include an architect (student of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning or interior design) and a student of another discipline related to the New Farms for Expo workshop: namely agronomy, economics, urban geography, environmental engineering or the arts. The workshop is open to 24 MA and PhD international students and young professionals. To formalize their interest in taking part in the workshop, all of the applicants must send a letter of motivation and a personal CV (max 2 A4 sheets) and a work sample (max 3mb) before May 5, 2015 at 12 PM (+1 GMT) to the following address: events@newgenerationsweb.com In the letter of motivation, the candidate must highlight his/her preferences (please list first and second preference) from the three main themes of the workshop: (1) Building Metabolic Networks through Technologies; (2) New Brand and Storytelling; (3) New Economies. 25 May / Publication of the first part of the New Farms for EXPO dossier, with general information regarding the municipal farms and precedent studies. 3 June / Publication of the second part of the New Farms for EXPO dossier, with a selection of international case studies, a basic bibliography, and infor-mation about the main tutors and critics. 15 June / Publication of the third and last part of the dossier, providing some extra information. 24-30 June / International multi-disciplinary workshop 30 June / Public presentation of the workshop results Call for Participation
phase 1 / The preliminary research Starting from 20 May 2015, the workshop organizers will publish a dossier that is meant to provide useful information about the Milanese context and the contemporary setting of municipal farms in the city. The dossier will contain: a presentation of the local context of the city of Milan: a series of documents describing the historical relationship the city had with agricultural production presentation of the historical typology of the Lombard farmhouse a dossier, containing successful European urban reactivation processes from which to extract tools, practices and possible elements to include within the processing of the design groups a glossary of keywords related to farming and urban reactivation practices a series of diagrams, charts and images related to farming, selected as case studies for the event Participants will be asked to read and process provided information, arriving in Milan with a basic understanding of the fundamental traits of the Milan local context from a functional, productive and administrative point of view. Between the publication of the dossier and the beginning of the workshop, participants will be asked to accomplish several tasks, in order to start developing their own reflections which will be shared during the first day of the workshop. phase 2 / the Workshop structure Additional information The workshop will last a week, during which numerous multi-disciplinary confrontations will be paired with a rigorous production schedule. Participants will be divided into three working groups, whose task will be to develop investigative approaches and proposals on three main topics: 1. Building Metabolic Networks through Technologies 2. New Brand and Storytelling 3. New Economies The structure of the work will be divided in two sessions: production and processing, in which individual groups will work in complete autonomy, periodically alternating with group discussions. The three groups will also be visited by invited guests and critics, who will contribute to the evaluation of the work, share new contents through lectures and project critiques, in order to gradually increase the complexity and richness of the developed ideas. Two multidisciplinary sessions have been scheduled during the third and the fifth day of work, to open the confrontation among the different groups.
MAIN TOPICS New Economies Research of tools and economic practices capable of promoting sustainable economic reactivation; development of strategies and possible actions shaped within the local context. Muddled administrative procedures and high restructuring costs have proved difficulties in reactivating farms owned by the Milan municipality. The economic and financial crises also contributed to this slump, swiping away potential actors and stakeholders interested in the recovery of these structures. The City of Milan has, in the past two years, developed a tool for the temporary reuse of existing buildings, but apart from this, it seems more and more necessary to abandon the old economic models, and to develop new ones, for which the imperative is sustainability. If the traditional business models that have characterized the great urban operations at the beginning of the millennium have already proved their unsustainability, then reactivation initiatives promoted by community citizens must also commit to developing newer models. Building Metabolic Networks New Brand and Storytelling Collateral Activities through Technologies: Rethinking farms as a productive base for activity in terms of flows, mobility, energy and sustainability. The Cascina is a typology of the agricultural landscape of northern Italy and especially of the Po Valley. The farm was a complex system: housing, agriculture and animal husbandry activities, managing flows of incoming goods and generated-waste, but nonetheless sustainable. The first topic of research is to understand how the system of farms can reclaim a role of primary importance in the infrastructure of the Milanese territory, translating this former metabolic feature (in a territorial sense) into an urban one. Beyond Arcadian and nostalgic visions, the research will deal with contemporary technologies, which enable community participation and are fundamental for the development of smart cities. A new brand as an opportunity to recontextualize farms as a contemporary wealth for the city through which to build public/private alliances. The construction of a brand, slogan or narrative that gives strength to a project is an ever expanding agenda in architecture. One example is the project Municipi dell Abitare which, for the first time in 2007, suggested the recovery of the public farms for their conversion into garrisons of social assistance, and to aid the poorest demographics of the population of Milan. Since 2007, the process of farms reappropriation has started and is still ongoing, although the Municipality was incapable of forming a narrative to promote the importance and potential connected to this process. Building a new brand that communicates the new role of farms in the city and the services they can offer could contribute to raising awareness and giving the necessary spark that would inspire the individual actors who shall be the future protagonists of such a reactivation. wants to be open to different audience segments such as civic associations and informal groups active and/or interested in reactivating farms, especially professionals and entities involved in the processes of urban reactivation -. For this reason, two additional kinds of activities have been conceived: (1) two itineraries and site visits (by bike or other means of public transport) that invite the workshop participants - participating alongside other Expo visitors - to experience and to relate to the reality of these farms owned by the city of as well as witness successful examples of urban reactivation within city. During these visits, the workshop participants will have the chance to bond and to exchange ideas with various associations and participate in collective learning experiences, and, at the same time, acquire useful information concerning the typology, housed functions and management of these types of interventions. (2) public symposia: three side-events, which will be held at the seat of the Board of Architects of Milan, are conceived to permit a wider audience to become involved and to share in the collective know-how that will be collected, discussed and re-narrated in the workshop. The three public symposia will host talks and presentations offered by various international experts, and will take place on three nights (24, 26 and 28 June from 18:30 to 21:30) Outcomes of the workshop All of the projects developed throughout the workshop will be collected, re-mastered and presented in a publication that will be presented in several public events locally and internationally. It will be officially presented during the Cascine Aperte, the opening weekend of Associazione Cascine Milano, on 19-20 September 2015.
New Generations was initially conceived by Itinerant Office in 2012, with the aim of creating an European Platform for young students and architectural firms, establishing a network based on collaboration and cultural exchange. As a result of the recent economic crises, New Generations has been investigating innovative approaches to architecture as developed by young European firms since 2010, whose meeting and research projects activate international collaboration and knowledge exchange among students, architects and other creative professionals. Since 2014, New Generations is officially a Cultural Association, which involves architects, designers, makers and artists in many cultural events across Europe. The network has been growing since 2012 and now includes more than ten European countries: Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Portugal, Greece, Poland, England, Germany, Turkey and Romania - with the objective to cover the entire EU by 2017.
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