At the beginning of 2000, Maciachini area, in the north of Milan, is one of the hottest spot of the city post-industrial transformation. In less than a decade Maciachini Complex replaces the abandoned Carlo Erba factory and changes the whole neighbourhood between via Imbonati and via Crespi.
The “path” to Maciachini Business Park masterplan is one of the first architectural consulting that Luca Molinari provides to a private client, while the Complex includes the first works by Alessandro Scandurra, Italo Rota and Sauerbruch Hutton in Italy.
Maciachini. A groundbreaking urban workshop for Milan returns the polyphonic process that brought to the transformation of this portion of the city through dialogues, insights, accounts, photographs and drawings.
The dialogues unveil the virtuous relationship between the public and private protagonists along the project development. Representatives of the public administration, such as Milan city concillor for urban development Carlo Masseroli, Gianni Verga, councillor for housing and Beatrice Uguccioni, president of Milan Ward 9, are confronted with the developer, Europa Risorse, and many others. The book focuses on the project development phases, the features of the buildings and the regained public spaces. Eventually the photo-portraits by Filippo Romano tell about the people who live and work in the neighbourhood, the evolving life in Maciachini streets.
The volume opens up to the multiple functions of the intervention, particularly its opennes and permeability towards the surrounding neighbourhoods through a complex system of public spaces such as the green central road, next to the renovated cycle paths and pedestrian zones along the perimeter ways, above all near the vital Inbonati. Here the chimney of the Carlo Erba still stands, memory of the neighbourhood history.