Milan’s Polytechnic was chosen in 1993 as the location for Italy's first-ever degree course in Industrial Design. The history of the Industrial Design degree (at the Faculty of Design since June 2000) has been marked by a sustained interest in trying out new and innovative course structures, as a response to the real needs of the contemporary mar...
Separatism in the North is mainly felt in the provinces. I was much more aware of the Balkan war starting in the provinces than I was in the capitals with their embassies. I received an accurate impression of many of the changes of the past twenty years in these outlying areas, rather than in the cities. We have large cities like Bratislava, Prag...
Today, in 2007 (yes, 2007 is fast approaching), for the first time in the history of mankind, more than 50% of the population lives in cities. Just a century ago, when our great-grandparents or grandparents were alive, a few generations back, 90% lived in the countryside, and only 10% in cities. A transformation on a global scale. On an astronomica...
There is a famous story bandied about by the world’s leading historians. They say that, at a certain point in Babylon, part of the city was occupied by invaders and enemies, and the other parts knew nothing about it. In other words, there was no communication between the various parts of the city (...).
The problem I’ve been feeling as a maj...
I’d only been at the Architecture Biennale for seven seconds when I saw a red number appear regarding my city: while every city in the world was growing by 25, 50 or 172 inhabitants each hour, the only one with a minus 1 was Milan. There and then, my pride was hurt, as it makes you think “We’re disappearing!” One less person, one less every...
The attraction of large urban areas and developing countries in particular obviously still exerts a very strong influence. Yet perhaps we can now assert that even at this stage, we have to rethink the concept of the megalopolis as being linked to the familiar phenomena of overpopulation and overcrowding. Obviously, density has both positive and n...
A thousand futures, each one unique. In my view, the big mistake that is currently insinuating itself is the idea that every kind of growth is parallel to another kind. This is part of a semantic confusion affecting all languages nowadays. Today, there is no single language which has the courage to re-evaluate itself completely.
Town planning is...
Over time, I have learned to observe with the eye of a detective, or someone who wants to gather documentary evidence, avoiding a critical spatial dimension. This means that my impressions are highly subjective, the same as any curious person's. Curiosity about places, different landscapes, far-flung destinations, what I saw as a child, the wonde...
Obviously, the imagination feeds on knowledge. You need to know things before you can imagine them. This is where it comes in handy to read books about that concentrated mass of human history: cities. In Europe, large cities are usually unsuitable, even to accommodate modernity. Even in a metropolis like London or Paris, where large avenues were ...
The pre-industrial city was one in which classes mingled, where the aristocrats were on one floor, the middle class on another, and the working class on yet another, all in the same building.
With the advent of the industrialised society, there was a shift in the functions of each social class. This led to the working class ghettos, upper class ...
A city is like a life: it needs a soul.
A city’s soul is its inhabitants, its recollections, its memory... and also a certain element of mystery. A city without mystery is a dry city...loveless, emotionless. I think of a city as a face, like someone you want to see again, someone you want to love. Someone we might not get on with all the tim...
In the words of economist Jeremy Rifkin: “In 2007 more than half of the world’s population will live in cities”. I would add that there is no alternative. More than just large dormitories, mega-cities are places which attract the greatest investments in order to create and maintain the structures that guarantee the fundamental aspects of thei...
The meaning of colour evolves in parallel with culture.