OMA has won the competition for a new masterplan of Scalo Farini and San Cristoforo sites which are now disused railway yards north and south of the periphery of Milan.
The contest was organized by public transport companies Ferrovie dello Stato, FS Sistemi Urbani S. r. l. and RFI, in collaboration with the municipality of Milan, the Lombardy region and developer Coima SGR.
Led by OMA, the winning team consisted also of Laboratorio Permanente, Vogt Landscape Architects, Philippe Rahm Architects, Net Engineering, Ezio Micelli, Arcadis Italia, Temporiuso.net and Luca Cozzani.
The project follows the concepts of ecological filters and sustainable development. The new masterplan defines the Scalo Farini site as a green zone and San Cristoforo site as a blue zone.
The green zone works as a big park which cools hot winds and purifies toxic air and the blue one cleans the groundwater. Both of them create a landscape for people and animals and serve as ecological filters.
In the authors’ scheme, public space, including water, bridges and greenery, is fixed, while buildings are uncertain.
The city’s future economic developments will influence the scale of developments in Farini, so it must be created an adaptable and resilient environment that can respond to economic and political changes.
Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, Partner in Oma says about the project:
“In a moment of dramatic environmental transformation and permanent economic uncertainty, our priorities have changed. The most valuable currency is no longer ‘brick’ – the built – but rather the climatic conditions that cities will be able to provide and ensure for their citizens. The city of the twentieth century, with its high energy consumption, must be overcome by reconsidering the principles that have marked urban development since the classical era.”
