U_Cloud. Town planning goes visual at Milano Design Week.

Russian architecture firm, SPEECH created the U_Cloud installation for Milan Design Week. An urban cloud combining technology, art and town planning located in the central courtyard of the University of Milan.



U_Cloud is an installation created by the architects from Russian firm SPEECH Tchoban/Kuznetsov together with Velko 2000 for Milano Design Week.  



A cloud of LED screens seems to hover over the lawn in the central courtyard of the University of Milan, projecting a sequence of images. These images create a visual link between nature and its apparent antagonist – the city – that appears to spectators with a huge visual impact.





We were able to meet and chat with Sergey Tchoban during the “Feeding the City” conference, and he explained that this idea is as simple as it is symbolic, and that it aims to set up a connection between towns and their natural surroundings. 



The mirrors provide a structural foundation for the installation, detaching the cloud – and therefore the planning concept – from the territory. Another way of looking outside the box, with a broader, more complex and detached look at town planning that plays an increasingly important part in planning for our future, strongly identified by urban areas.





The architect Sergey Tchoban is on the judging panel for the international architecture and photography contest, Next Landmark 2014, promoted by the Floornature.com portal.

Project: SPEECH Tchoban/Kuznetsov con Velko 2000
Location: Central courtyard of the University of Milan
Year: 2014
Photography: © Gianluca Giordano