Back to the city. Delineating a growth reversal pattern

The thesis is exploring the possibilities of creating new relations inside the urban structure of Milan to modify its existing growth pattern and to suggest an alternative strategy for reversing it in order to create conditions for a better structured and sustainable city. The project is developed in two phases. The first investigates the issue of understanding the problem of shrinking city of Milan and finding a strategy to reduce its negative influence. The main conclusion is that the city grows continuously invading new territories, whereas inside its structure there are many medium and large-scale abandoned areas that can be used instead. The city scale strategy is suggesting defining a system in which those misused spaces are turned into anchor points which will be the new narrators of the reversed pattern. The definition of those new nodes and their connection attempts to create a new system in which the boundary is no more outer limit but is transformed into internal areal threshold aiming to stabilize the growth of the city. The second part is resolving the case of Ex-Macello in Milan as one of the key points in the reversing pattern strategy. The architectural design reflects the requirements of flexibility of shared creative spaces and explores the opportunities that such design can suggest to establish new ways of work and living. In detail are developed a creativity hub and an alternative housing complex.