11-05-2012

Cascina Cuccagna: a flower in the concrete

Gianluca Giordano,

Milan,

Barn,

Design,

Milano Design Week,

abstract



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Cascina Cuccagna: a flower in the concrete
A farmhouse built in 1695 (one of the most centrally located of the 60 farmhouses owned by the City of Milan) becomes an opportunity to propose a new way of working together to achieve social wellbeing and quality.

Cascina Cuccagna hosted the GOODESIGN initiative during Fuorisalone 2012 and introduced itself to the international public at Milano Design Week.
Under the title “Lavorare bene, abitare meglio” (Work well, live better) GOODESIGN hosted 4 macro-areas (Green, Living, Mobility and Food) in which more than 50 companies and designers exhibited their responses to these challenges.

What better location than Cascina Cuccagna, offering a new model of urban design on a human scale: after many years of abandonment this piece of Milan’s historic heritage, protected by the Artistic and Cultural Heritage Superintendency, is once again a place for participation in civic society.

A group of associations and cooperatives in Milan took on the task of preserving and restoring the building, adding new facilities onto the existing constructions and participating in the symbolic stratification of the various architectural elements. All this was done on the basis of the principles of building biology and sustainable use of energy, with a hydro-geothermal heating system and ecological insulation.

The Cuccagna project created a multipurpose space, a place for local people to meet and spending time together and a cultural laboratory: a place that not only brings the most tangible aspects of the countryside into the city centre but develops a new concept of “green” metropolitan life with citizens’ active participation.

It is like a flower growing in concrete, offering the city of Milan 4000 square metres of space for sustainable development. The event in the farmhouse took advantage of the great opportunity offered by Fuorisalone to present a new Milan that sets the trends in responding to the great challenges of the future, on a human scale and in individual neighbourhoods.


For more information on Cascina Cuccagna: http://www.cuccagna.org
GOODESIGN – lavorare bene, abitare meglio, http://goodesignfuorisalone2012.tumblr.com
Photographs: Courtesy of Cascina Cuccagna and Gianluca Giordano, http://ggiordans.blogspot.it/


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