M97 is an urban regeneration project developed in the School of Sustainability Master's program. The site is owned- and managed by Unipol, and M97 is a research project to investigate the possibilities of urban regeneration in the area of Gratosoglio, Milan's most Southern municipality.
The Gratosoglio neighborhood was developed in the 1980s work boom. It thrived through the end of the century- and almost a decade into the next one. But as the crash of 08' sent most of the workers from the South back home, 52 housing blocks- and six high-rise residential towers were left close to empty, followed by an unsafe ground floor environment without commercial activity, and with strong signs of desertification. Today, the municipality has some of the highest average age in Milan, as well as unemployment- and school dropouts.
After extensive research on the area, the team decided to invite representatives from the community to a roundtable meeting to verify our results. The meeting was hosted on-site to allow the community to enter the plot for the first time. Fruitful hours confirmed our first strategies and gave new, valuable input.
An early strategy was established to minimize demolition and add what was necessary to make the existing buildings work, resulting in five unique interventions for the five different fronts
A new public anchor was developed further as an essential part of the master plan. Something impactful was needed to make the change that the area needed, and to have a radial effect on the neighborhood. The public and social character of this building was important for it to create ownership and become a part of the Gratosoglio identity.
With a sensitive approach to orientation and adaptation in both a climatic- and contextual sense, the new building is able to provide rich spaces with high comfort in today's Mediterranean climate- and the tropical one that is anticipated.
To improve the resilience of the plot we implemented a smart grid. The smart grid makes the plot less dependent on energy from the public grid, and able to work independently during the more frequent power blackouts. Any excess energy beyond the capacity of the batteries would contribute to the public grid. Rainwater is harvested for reuse in greywater systems, like toilets and irrigation.
A carbon assessment was done to compare our approach to the conventional way of demolishing- and rebuilding. By only demolishing the two central buildings, we were able to reduce the carbon emissions by 83%, 28'000 tons of CO^2 eq.
masters thesis in School of Sustainability, Sustainable Architecture
w. Achira Shetty + Claudia + Edoardo Cicala + Edoardo Lavanna + Georgina Reyes