Piazzale Loreto Milan Renewal, Design Week 2021 Installation, Ceetrus-Nhood, Arcadis Italia News

LOC – Loreto Open Community Milan News

8 September 2021

Location: Piazzale Loreto, Milan, Italy

LET’S BREAK IT UP!

Wednesday, September 8th at Triennale Milano’s Salone d’Onore

Piazzale Loreto’s green revolution has begun

The installation previewing Piazzale Loreto’s future Sky Forest – LOC Loreto Open Community, realized in partnership with the Forestami project, has been presented.

The online launch to the open community of LOC – Loreto Open Community from the website nhood.it/foresta-urbana/ was announced and shown the model of LOC.

LOC – Loreto Open Community at Milan Design Week 2021

Milan, September 8th, 2021 – Piazzale Loreto’s green revolution has begun. On the occasion of the Supersalone and Milan Design Week 2021, Ceetrus-Nhood, one of Italy’s key players in the real estate industry specializing in urban rigenerations, the awardee for the redevelopment of Piazzale Loreto in Milan with the project “LOC – Loreto Open Community”, together with its partner Arcadis Italia and with the patronage of Comune di Milano, Milano Design Week and Bella Estate, has presented the installation entitled Let’s Break It Up!, an exhibition of 16 Quercus Palustris trees, a preview of the “urban forest” that will populate the LOC – Loreto Open Community project tomorrow. Created by the international landscape consulting firm LAND, Let’s Break It Up! will be open in the Triennale Milano square.

The presentation was attended by: Marco Balducci (CEO of Nhood Italy), Stefano Boeri (President of Triennale Milano and the Forestami Scientific Committee), Pierfrancesco Maran (Councillor for Urban Planning, Agriculture and Green Areas City of Milan ), Raffaele Cattaneo (Councillor for Environment and Climate of Lombardy Region), Andreas Kipar (CEO of LAND), Carlo Masseroli (Arcadis Italia City Executive), Maria Chiara Pastore (Scientific Director of Forestami). The journalist Cristina Gabetti moderated the meeting.

Let’s Break It Up! Milan Design Week 2021 installation:

“Planting trees, growing forests, multiplying the number of plants alongside the streets, in the squares, in the courtyards, and on our cities’ roofs and facades, is the most effective, economical, and engaging way to slow global warming, reduce consumption, and clean the air we breathe of fine particles. As a result, Urban Forestry is currently at the top of the agendas of the planet’s great metropolises (from New York to Melbourne, from Shanghai to Paris) and Greater Milan – with Forestami’s project of 3 million by 2030 – is in the running to become one of the leading cities in a major campaign to reverse climate change in the world,” explains architect Stefano Boeri, Chairman of Forestami’s Scientific Committee.

Marco Balducci, CEO of Nhood Italy: “Today is the first day of the journey of LOC – Loreto Open Community , a project by and for the city of Milan in which we answer the call of nature and invite citizens to transform Piazzale Loreto, all together, through “The call of the urban wild”. Launching this sustainable revolution means transforming the city and its spaces by restoring their beauty and vitality, in line with our principles and the sustainability embodied by Ceetrus-Nhood – transforming spaces and neighborhoods into mixed-use, sustainable, and hospitable places to live that have a three-pronged positive impact (social, environmental, economic), through active, structured, and transparent stakeholder engagement.

LOC – Loreto Open Community captures the full spirit of our journey and for this reason we chose at the very start the seeds of the future forest that will provide shade to the square, its exhibitions, and spaces dedicated to concerts, services, catering and much, much more, in partnership with those who make “urban forestation” their mission: Forestami. Bringing to life even today the first green core of this island, which will improve people’s lives every single day, means returning to add new value to a place so important for city of Milan’s history and future, allowing this inspiration to spread into the surrounding streets as well. It is a sign of disruption, hence our invitation is “Let’s Break it Up!””

The installation’s name was not chosen at random: the 16 trees literally pierce through the asphalt, break the greyness, and allow the vegetation to emerge, as will happen in Piazzale Loreto.

Let’s Break It Up! Milan Design Week 2021 landscape installation:

Let’s Break It Up! thus becomes the symbol of how the future Piazzale Loreto will typify a location, both physical and mental, that embodies a deeper understanding of the role Nature plays in our daily lives, creates a new way of looking at the world, and most of all, of experiencing it. It is a total reclamation of the greenery in a piazza, currently congested by traffic, but tomorrow will be the green heart of LOC – Loreto Open Community: the Sky Forest, around which the Open Community of Loreto will grow. A tangible and immediate demonstration of the green transformation the project will bring about in the square and neighboring streets.

During the presentation of the installation at Triennale Milano, in fact, Nhood announces its partnership with Forestami, the forestation project promoted by the Metropolitan City of Milan, the Municipality of Milan, the Lombardy Region, Parco Nord Milano, Parco Agricolo Sud Milano, ERSAF, and Fondazione di Comunità Milano Città, Sud Ovest, Sud Est and Adda Martesana Onlus, Fondazione Comunitaria Nord Milano, Fondazione Comunitaria del Ticino Olona, the University of Milan and the University of Milan Bicocca, which envisages the planting of 3 million trees by 2030 and was born from the result of research by Milan Polytechnic with the support of Fondazione Falck and FS Sistemi Urbani.

The partnership with Forestami will allow the future square to be planted with more than five hundred trees that Nhood announces having already purchased today. The partnership will also take the tangible form of an appeal to citizens of the associations in the area with “The call of the urban wild”, that is “the “call” for the city of Milan’s future forest.

“The call of the urban wild” is an invitation to Piazzale Loreto’s open community to express their opinions and visit the listening point to be opened in the square in the fall to share ideas and proposals.

During the presentation Nhood announced having opened the membership in the LOC – Loreto Open Community from the web site: nhood.it/foresta-urbana/.

The video of the call LOC – Loreto Open Community:

Film on YouTube

The destiny of the Let’s-Break-it-Up! trees, in fact, does not end with this installation: they will soon be replanted in the city in places chosen by the community of citizens. Thus, this is a way to expand the open community while at the same time extending the urban forest in the areas adjacent to Piazzale Loreto, creating spaces where every aspect of life – from work to commerce, to relationships between people – can develop a dialogue with Nature.

Andreas Kipar, CEO of LAND: “LOC is an urban project capable of both regenerating social relations within the neighborhood and establishing a new relationship with the soil and urban nature. The green components of the project assume a structural function able to generate, together with the architecture, a new urban landscape. The way of conceiving cities has radically changed and green has a decisive role in building landscape stories capable of regenerating entire communities and territories through the reconnection with nature itself.

The goal is to recover sociality, promote the presence of green as a safe haven and devise a new model of development based on social welfare and environmental quality. The installation “Let’s Break it Up”, showing 16 oaks that will be part of the Sky Forest, the green heart of Loreto, brings these concepts to the Triennale: to make visitors conscious about the importance of green in the city in all its meanings and, at the same time, to give a strong message of breaking the mold and the necessary paradigm shift towards the ecological transition where nature comes first, free to reconquest its vital space! »

Maria Chiara Pastore, Forestami’s Scientific Director, adds: “When we plant a tree, we look to the future. We change a small or large area of the city, but we also change the way of living in our cities because we make space for new living beings and the flora and fauna they will host. And we change the way we humans experience those spaces, staying in the shade, walking along tree-lined boulevards, for example. We improve the air we breathe and our mood. We can only dream of a better way to design our future.”

Let’s Break It Up! Milan landscape installation:

Carlo Masseroli, Arcadis Italia City Executive: “From the outset, we thought of LOC as a place that focuses on people and their well-being, and cares about the environment. Creating new spaces that welcome the needs of those who use them, modelling them on the answers we want to give the city in terms of green investments and sustainable urban development. This is the idea behind the project.

More than ever before, today it is essential to work for sociality, to slowly restore relationships – the stimulus and driving force of every city and community, including economic ones. To do so it is essential to find a balance between public management and private investor, streamlining the chain of papers and contacts and making the relationship between the two parties more direct: LOC is a virtuous example of public-private collaboration devoted to environmental, social and governance sustainability that will give Milan a square, an urban forest and a positive sign of future”.

The seed of Piazzale Loreto’s future Nature is being planted today. LOC is an integrated ecology project that will make Piazza Loreto and the surrounding streets breath once again, commencing with the planting of 500 trees, including “Quercus Palustris” and other tree species, in the ground. These, combined with the creation of bodies of water, will restore over 10,000 square meters of green public space and help reduce pollution and heat islands. Together with the installation of 1,300 square meters of green roofs, more than 4 thousand square meters of photovoltaic panels, and a variety of energy strategies and innovative technologies aimed at achieving carbon neutrality, LOC will bring about the reduction of energy consumption and the carbon footprint with values close to zero.

To gain an overall view, at the presentation on Wednesday, September 8th, exclusively, the LOC model has been shown for the first time. This was an opportunity to understand better how this square, currently a non-place, gray and congested by traffic, will be transformed into a green space, alive and animated by cultural and artistic initiatives, stores, restaurants and services for the citizenry. A project that does not end with its construction but extends for the entire future of its life cycle.

***

Ceetrus-Nhood

Ceetrus-Nhood is one of the key actors in Italy’s real estate industry, specialized in urban regeneration works. The company has 1,000 employees in 10 countries, a portfolio of 300 assets, 200 of which are owned, 30,000 residences for a total asset value of 8 billion euros and 40 projects under development, including the regeneration of Piazzale Loreto in Milan, the Gare du Nord in Paris, and La Stazione Vialia Vigo in Spain.

The company belongs to AFM (Association Familiale Mulliez), to which about 200 companies belong, including Decathlon, Leroy Merlin, Brico, Norauto, Midas, Kiabi and others, distributed across 52 countries. In 2021, Ceetrus merged with Nodi – AFM’s company specializing in real estate in France – to create Nhood, a new company specializing in real estate consulting and services that develops new neighborhoods and mixed-use living places on redevelopment land with a three-pronged positive impact on people, the planet, and prosperity.

The new business model the company proposed is based on four pillars: culture, innovation, commerce, and proximity. The Italian branch is based in Milan and is engaged in several urban regeneration projects, including the regeneration of Piazzale Loreto in Milan, and the construction of the new Urban Smart Mall Merlata Bloom Milano, in the Arexpo area northeast of the city.

LOC – Loreto Open Community

LOC – Loreto Open Community is the project that won the international tender C40 Reinventing Cities for the urban regeneration of Piazzale Loreto in Milan with a team led by Ceetrus-Nhood. LOC will be an “Open Sky Square”, designed thanks to an integrated approach, listening to and involving the local community both in the pre-design phase and in the subsequent phases, able to respond to the issues of resilience, climate adaptation, and in line with the goals of the UN 2030 Agenda.

LOC will be conceived as a large, lively and flexible hub where people can experience exhibitions, concerts, meeting and cultural spaces, services and a wide variety of culinary options within the new Piazza’s outdoor spaces and areas – conceived as a Sky Forest (featuring tall trees able to mitigate the heat island effect, absorbing CO2 and green areas that function as “lamination basins” for the benefit of hydraulic invariance) – and in the Via Porpora complex, regenerated via the use of sustainable and functional building technologies. LOC will be designed and built according to the criteria indicated by the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and CAM (Minimum Environmental Criteria) certification to optimize energy consumption and streamline the entire life cycle of buildings. Using digital technologies to monitor and optimize energy parameters and a site app to facilitate access to building and new district services, LOC will be a “Smart and Sustainable Neighborhood.”

Arcadis

ARCADIS is a world leader in civil and environmental engineering consulting and design. Present in 70 countries with over 28,000 employees, it has been bringing value to its customers since 1888, offering tailor-fit solutions based on sustainability, health, and the safety of the land and its citizens. Arcadis Italia employs more than 170 people in its Milan and Rome offices. Active in the Italian market since 2008, it ranks among the top companies specialized in urban regeneration, land reclamation design, water treatment, and sustainable-building and industrial settlement design. Arcadis works alongside its customers throughout the entire life cycle of the assets it develops and manages throughout their conception, creation, redevelopment, and digitalization.

Land

LAND is an international landscape consulting firm with offices in Italy, Switzerland and Germany and high-profile projects throughout Europe, Canada, the Middle East, and Russia. Andreas Kipar and a team of more than 100 landscape designers, architects, urban planners, agronomists, engineers and researchers have transformed regions, cities, and localities since 1990.

LAND’s consulting, planning and design work seeks to improve human well-being by implementing positive climate solutions and participatory processes that lead to sustainable development. We advise public and private customers on how to innovate with nature by applying international policies and promoting collaborative planning procedures.

Together with our customers and a vast network of partners, we harness the opportunities presented by the green transition in our communities. Our key projects include: the strategy of Raggi Verdi [Green Rays], Porta Nuova, and the regeneration of the former EXPO MIND area in Milan; the Urban Open Space strategy and Krupp Park, which includes the ThyssenKrupp headquarters, and the Freiheit Emscher masterplan in Essen; the Green Infrastructure strategy for the Ruhr Region; the renaturalization of the Airolo Valley, and the Cassarate River Park in Switzerland; the Zuglo District in Budapest; the Rublyovo-Arkhangelskoye Smart City in Moscow; the Saint-Laurent Biodiversity Corridor in Montreal; Urubah Park in Riyadh and EXPO Dubai 2020 in the United Arab Emirates; the Germany Pavilion at Expo Beijing 2019; and the UNaLab and T-Factor research and innovation projects funded by the European Commission. LAND’s work has been recognized through more than 17 prestigious international awards, including Mercury Prize, MIPIM Award, Wan Awards, the Pisa Biennale, and the Passive and Low Energy Architecture Award (PLEA).

Forestami

FORESTAMI is the project promoted by the Metropolitan City of Milan, the Municipality of Milan, the Lombardy Region, Parco Nord Milano, Parco Agricolo Sud Milano, ERSAF and Fondazione di Comunità, which provides for the planting of 3 million trees by 2030, to clean the air, improve the life of the great Milan and counteract the effects of climate change. Born from a research of the Politecnico di Milano thanks to the support of the Falck Foundation and FS Sistemi Urbani.

The collaboration between all the promoters has made it possible to build a strategic vision of the role of greenery in the Milanese metropolitan area; and to create a process of census, enhancement and implementation of all green, permeable and tree-lined systems, to promote policies and projects to promote urban forestry activities and build a Metropolitan Park in the Milan area. forestami.org

Piazzale Loreto Milan Design Week 2021 Installation images / information 080921

Location: Milan, Lombardy, northern Italy

Milan Architecture

Contemporary Milanese Architecture

Milan Building Designs – chronological list

Milan Architecture Tours – city walks by e-architect

Milan Architects Offices – architectural firm contact details on e-architect

Salone Internazionale del Mobile Milan 2018

photo courtesy of designers
Salone del Mobile di Milano 2018

Stanton Williams reveal Canopy of Light pavilion at Interni: House in Motion for Milan Design Week 2018

Baldacchino by Stanton Williams © Saverio Lombardi Vallauri
House in Motion Milan Design Week 2018