GREEN BETWEEN. REGENERATION PROJECT OF THE CRESCENZAGO AREA IN MILAN
introduction
Camillo Botticini
The regeneration project of the Crescenzago area represents an important opportunity for the realization of an urban place founded on the relationship between built and open spaces, where the open space becomes the protagonist of a substantial redefinition of the characteristics of an abandoned place. The competition area is in a post-World War II “historical suburb,” where the residential built environment is characterized by bodies in an orderly sequence, with a homogeneous relationship between the built and open space. However, the gaps between the building bodies are indistinct and often abandoned. Residential volumes on via Civitavecchia are flanked by the enclosures of manufacturing activities: impermeable and closed systems that define a boundary between the marked urbanization of via Palmanova with the Park connected to the Lambro River and the eastern bypass. Between these urban fragments, northwest of the area, are the limits of the subway line and Palmanova Street, which together form a sharp urban caesura. Potential quality elements supporting the area’s transformation are the nearby Lambro Park, part of a green axis connecting it to the most recent and dignified social housing intervention, composed of building bodies perpendicular to the axis itself.