Caserme e città. L’esperienza di Milano / | Barraks and cities. The case of Milan

The contribution aims at highlighting some criticalities of the processes of transformation of military areas into the Italian urban contexts, both in terms of decisions, in interaction between public actors, and of planning strategies and urban design, through the close observation of Milan experience. Disappeared or decommissioned military districts - albeit in their variety - present common, symbolic and morphological elements, belonging to the “interrupted areas”, which require recurring design choices: the invention of a new urban role, the destiny of historic buildings (restoration , hybridization, selective conservation, demolition), the opening to the city and the theme of the fence (from the perimeter to the permeability or rewriting of the limits), wall treatment (maintenance, partial preservation, demolition or re-meaning), access system (to be confirmed, to be integrated or to subvert), etc. On these issues, even through a dialogue with architect Andrea Costa of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Tourism, some recurrent weaknesses and some traces of research are identified, both for the conservative and for the designer.