Monza: un nuovo ruolo per le aree dismesse della città

The report aims to provide a theoretical and applied analysis on the relationships between conservation and valorization, starting from an experience carried out in the Laboratory of Architectural Design and Heritage (Laboratorio di Progettazione per il Costruito) of the Scuola di Architettura Civile of the Politecnico di Milano. The final two-years Laboratory develops projects by integrating the disciplines of composition with those of restoration and preservation, construction engineering and building technologies, allowing the design to be extended to multiple scales and problems. The application site involves several disused areas in the southern part of the city of Monza. They are different in dimension and consistency: some of them are free spaces, others are occupied by disused services (slaughter houses, prison) and factories, with some buildings to be preserved. All of them are derived from the past manufacturing vocation of the city. Starting from the necessities of functional conversion and restoring of some buildings, the design has been extended to the urban places and the relationships among existing buildings, open spaces and infrastructures. This has allowed us to give a new identity and shape to a large section of the city: the restoration of valueless and deteriorated buildings has been turned into an improvement of urban quality for an entire urban sector. The work aims to demonstrate the possibility and the opportunity to systematize fragmented and occasional resources in order to redesign the urban relationships through a general urban project. In this case, the need for conservation and transformation becomes an opportunity for the redesign of a system of collective places connected by the Villoresi canal, by cycle routes and green, that allows us to introduce new urban services and equipment, workplaces, parks and gardens in an excluded and peripheral part of the city of Monza.