Politecnico di Milano. Campus expansion design : a study of campus architecture and landscaping strategy

It is a great honor to be able to study in Politecnico di Milano for my master degree. With great gratitude, I have chosen to do a research and project on the campus extension topic, which is aimed in solving the problem of lacking facilities and resources for students. Anyhow, through the researches of the derivation and development of the modern university system, as well as the recent trends of campus architecture design, I started to rethink about the idea of merely adding some utilizable spaces to the school. Additional spaces for regular function is definitely a must, but what’s more as a campus? And what’s more for the citizens and general public? Should university be a treasure house of knowledge, or a open court for debating and learning? Should it be a workshop for intensive collaboration among people from various backgrounds, or a laboratory where countless experiments take place? Should it be a sacred temple of Athena, or just a comfortable yard that you would love to linger for a whole sunny afternoon. More and more, the leading universities began to open their treasury to the rest of the world through internet open courses and digitized archives. But there is still one thing that they could never share, which is the campus. The area of Città Studi and Lambrate has gone through substantial physical changes since the establishment of Leonardo Campus of Politecnico di Milano in 1927. The Campus, in a certain sense, witnessed the tide and ebb of the urbanization and industrilization. The project site is located right in the middle of this formerly prominent industrial district. Therefore, the design strategy has to interpret both the pressing demands of the University, as well as the history and charm of the site, to a physical form.