März / April 2016
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid)
Città delle culture
Redefining Cultural Speculation

Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid)
Master
13.11.2015
Juan Herreros
Städtebau
The project is the result of a research on the evolution of museum typologies, until the current situation of “Guggenheim Effect”: the creation of a global icon, capable of redefining a city’s identity. The project criticizes this model, that has been reproduced in many cities, supressing its regenerating capacity. The failed project of “Città delle Culture” in Milan is taken as case study. An ambitious project, from which finally only a small part was built, the MUDEC, an architectural icon, but with a trivial content, that ignores the urban and social context in which it is built. The new project redefines the original idea of “Città delle Culture”, readapting it to the precious urban context of Milan.
Architectural Strategy_ The materialization of this new City of Culture is based on Aldo Rossi’s concept of “Analogue City”: the city built through the collective memory. The new Project is therefore conceived as an experiment of cultural typologies. Each cultural type will be defined by an specific atmosphere, by an iconicity -as a reflection of each mechanism of cultural production -, and by constructive and economic strategies.
Constructive Strategy_ An individual language for each type is created, but under a general criterion: the industrialized architecture, as a redefinition of the site’s industrial character.
Economic Strategy_ In order to survive the current crisis of the public investment in culture, a new financing mechanism is created: Programmatic Duality. Each cultural programme will have associated a lucrative counter-programme, adapting the project to Milan’s duality.
The new “Città delle Culture” is the result of superposing all these types, conditions and strategies: a continuous space, a sequence of programmes, that generates hybrid situations in the intersections. The new “Città delle Culture” as an architectural, cultural experiment