"The City of Bridges" - 2nd Year (ınter/exp 9)

 Milan, the contemporary European city burdened with an extensive, obsolete overground network.  We witness an element which was perhaps an avantgarde solution for connectivity and transport in the 19th Century, ironically becomes the obstacle itself a century later. What used to be the "peripheral" railway network now finds itself flooded on all sides by an urban avalanche. What we are left with are isolated pockets and a major surplus of underused space around this network.  

The proposal aims to "bridge" over these gaps in the urban fabric, rather than solely focusing and operating on the urban "rupture".  The main approach of this project is to attempt and bring the different edges of the rupture closer by studying surrounding programmatic profiles and consequently coming up with different sets of programmatic stretchers and condensers designed to function between specific zones, to connect and stimulate human flow between areas which were formerly cut off from each other, properly connecting lost spaces and isolated communities back to the city. 

 Referencing a historic figures like Viollet-le-Duc and John Ruskin as well as contemporary architects in the field of conservation like Carlo Scarpa, The project has the focus of understanding key different approaches to conservation and consequently aims to establish a provocative melting pot, to become a "museum" that brings the formerly uninformed visitor further into the world of conservation, to offer the right questions and their debatable answers, but above all to fuel a valid discourse within the minds of its visitors and the surrounding community.