area 110 | expo 2010 shanghai

interview to Stefano Boeri and Michele Brunello

Laura Andreini: What are the principal contents and priorities of the Master plan prepared for the World Exposition of Milan of 2015?
Stefano Boeri: The World Exposition is a very powerful geopolitical instrument; when it works, it brings the world to a place, and the future to the present. It is a global event, which invites the world to unite its best scientific and productive energies to discuss on a great issue which concerns the future of Mankind. This has been the case in the last centuries, in London, in Paris, in Montreal. But in recent years, in the last editions, this instrument has begun to show its inadequacy, its fragility. To attract fewer and fewer visitors, and to produce decreasing economic and communicative results. Shanghai will probably be an exception due to the enormous number of potential Chinese spectators, but the data of Saragossa and the last Expos confirms a drastic drop in visitors as compared to predictions and expectations. The mechanisms and strategies of planetary tourism have changed radically in recent years. The proliferation of global events; the competition between cities that are capitals of the arts, science and culture have turned the Expo into one among many events of international importance.
Why should a Chinese, Argentine or South African citizen invest time and money in 2015 to travel across the world to visit Milan and see a fair where the products and research of the world’s countries on food are exhibited, when he can easily obtain the same information on the screen of his computer or even on that of the cellular phone he has in his pocket?
Why should one prefer a series of stands to the possibility of visiting the places in the world where the fight against hunger is in the frontline?
The idea of ‘giving earth to the world’, of realizing a Planetary Botanical Garden in Milan in 2015 which shows the technical and creative skills of the countries, the companies, the farmer communities, is inspired precisely by a desire to revolutionize the principle of the exposition: not to give the visitor something he can get anywhere (information) but a value which will become increasingly rare in the future: direct experience. We have focused on this objective from the beginning, with the members of the Architecture Advisory Board and received inspiration from Carlo Petrini, of Slow food, who has assisted us together with Claudia Sorlini and the Agronomy Faculty of Milan. Another innovative aspect which will characterize the Milan Expo is the organization of the plots of the various countries. Also here the traditional mechanism consists of a competition between the richest countries, which all try to create the most conspicuous pavilion, while the poor countries have frequently been grouped, often in anonymous pavilions. In Milan we have sought from the very beginning to create an equilibrated system where every country not only has a single exposition lot, but also 20 metres along the central boulevard; geopolitical hierarchies have thus been avoided. The great unifying element, the large boulevard reserved for pedestrians, which the farming plots of the countries will face, will moreover feature a very long table where the visitors may stop to try the foods produced alongside.
To walk alongside the cultivated fields and greenhouses with plants grown all over the world, observe the transformation of the products and taste them will allow every visitor to experience, physically and directly, a place which may truly embody, in its essence, a planetary effort to solve the great issue of hunger, of wasted resources, of the unequal distribution of food, of the unbalances in the ownership of seeds. It means to offer the world’s citizens a unique and memorable experience.
Michele Brunello: With the Architecture Advisory Board, when defining the Concept Plan, we have envisaged a new kind of ”monumentality” for the Expo, far from the hedonistic competition to present the most amazing architectures which has characterized the pavilions of past Expos, but which aims for a more sensible, lasting and poetic ”monumentality”. An example of this may be the canal which runs around the perimeter of the site, turning the area of the Expo into an island, and which is inspired by the web of the old canals in the area of Milan and those of Venice, impressive infrastructures of a landscape which can only manifest its harmonious and poetic magnitude as a whole. The canal, which will be sufficiently deep to hold boats travelling around the perimeter of the site, will also represent an infrastructure allowing a ”slow” way to visit and move around the site, in addition to exploring the latest phyto treatment and water collection techniques. As to all the elements, as Stefano Boeri pointed out, our project does not feature any sequence of national pavilions designed to host a series of products and documentation aimed at celebrating the political and commercial splendours of the countries and their companies. It lacks that sequence, typical of a trade fair, of impressive architectures that compete in attracting the attention of the visitors, who are soon overwhelmed by the tediousness of a continuous repetition of offers and messages. We don’t want another Expo where the content is adapted to a container which, thanks to architectures inspired by banal concepts, with audacious and declaredly temporary forms, somehow remains the same, regardless of the theme of the exposition and the place where it is held. Rather, our idea has been to eliminate any distance between the content of Expo 2015 (Nourish the Planet, Energy for Life) and its exhibition architecture. The entire site will therefore be adapted to the theme, from the more strictly speaking structural elements to the more ephemeral interventions. For instance, we have not ideated the national pavilions as ”boxes” filled by contents, placed on a platform installed, more or less temporarily, as a public space. On the contrary, the countries will be invited to design pavilions representing their nation by setting up a real food production process, using the entire available space to grow, transform, treat, prepare and offer their products linked to the theme of nutrition. It does not necessary have to be a matter of an uninterrupted row of kitchen gardens and cultivated fields; for instance, there are countries of which subsistence depends on fishing, or others which will want to bring innovative technologies. The purpose is to involve the countries, through attentive guidelines, in the principle which has inspired the entire site. To practice, not to represent, to design open spaces as carefully as the closed ones, to pursue a ”light touch” approach for the pavilions which will only last the six months of the exposition, by designing them with a quality which is not necessarily linked to constructive aspects. In addition to the national pavilions, also the other large exhibition infrastructures will be based on this inspiring principle. A large part of the Planetary Botanical Garden which will be prepared for the Expo will, in fact, remain as a future heritage of the city. I am above all referring to the Agroecosystems and the greenhouses which reproduce the typical environments of the five principal climatic zones of the world and the ways food is produced and transformed in different parts of the world. This system of open spaces and greenhouses will include the construction of the Centre for Sustainable Development, which will probably house the Lombard Food Museum in the future; after the Expo it will remain as a large thematic and scientific park of worldwide interest. It is a matter of a very complex project, which we are developing with the work team of the Milan Polytechnic and the Agronomy Faculty of Milan. Its functions will be threefold: exhibition space during the Expo, theme park capable of attracting visitors also after 2015, centre of reference for the scientific world and the international research on the theme of nutrition.

Research on Agroecosystems and Greenhouses Diap – Polytechnic of Milan, Multiplicity.lab responsible professor: Stefano Boeri coordinator: Michele Brunello team: Lorenza Baroncelli with Stefano Baseggio, Corrado Longa, Giulia Meterangelis ,Maria Chiara Pastore, Pietro Pezzani agronomy faculty – University of Milan coordinators: Stefano Bocchi and Claudia Sorlini teachers: Giacomo Elisa, Natalia Fumagalli, Claudio Gandolfi, Alessandro Toccolini collaborators: Giovanna Sanesi, Giacomo Altamura, Stafano Gomarasca, Andrea Porro, Roberto Spigarolo Research on public farms: a project for the Expo and for Milan Diap – Polytechnic of Milan, Multiplicity.lab responsible professor: Stefano Boeri coordinators: Maddalena Bregani, Salvatore Porcaro team: Alessandra Dall’Angelo and Michela Bassanelli Architecture advisory board for the Expo 2015 masterplan Stefano Boeri, Richard Burdett, Jacques Herzog

L.A.: What is the current situation of the areas involved and what opportunities may arise thanks to this plan?
S.B.: As far as the situation of the areas involved are concerned I must say that, while they are currently defined as farmland, they are practically in disuse. The site is surrounded by a very dense infrastructural network of highways, railway junctions, railways and slip-roads, and a great variety of structures as the Trade Fair and the Bollate prison, crafts workshops or abandoned industrial areas. The biggest cemetery in Milan is also very close. However, the true crux concerns the ownership of the area, which today belongs to the Milan Trade Fair and the Cabassi family. An agreement has been stipulated which provides a permit, against the assignation of the area for the duration of the event, to build extensively (the volume indexes are in the order of 0.6) after 2015.
If public entities – the Expo Company, the Region or the Municipality – on the contrary decide to buy the area, something they have announced they intend to do, the scenario may change, but it is not yet clear in what direction. As to the opportunities which may arise, I consider there are three main ways in which the city may exploit great events to favour urban transformation processes.
The first is associated with cities which use great events to accelerate and reinforce projects which have already been commenced, or which are in any case part of the public strategic plans. This has been the case of Shanghai, where a large industrial area in disuse has been recovered in view of the Expo 2010. The second refers to cities which take advantage of great events to plan and realize, according to special time frames and procedures, a new part of the territory, a project which represents a novelty with respect to the forecasts and intentions of the local administrations. This is being done in South Africa with the new soccer stadiums, which serve as epicentres for urban services in various parts of the country.
A third way to connect the ordinary urban development with the planning of great events, finally, concerns cities which use great events to initiate a new phase in the social and urban development, to concretize a different vision of the future, to open – thanks to the model realized – a new evolutionary perspective. These three approaches are not alternatives, and can indeed often be found to coexist. The great challenge of the Expo 2015 is not merely to redesign a large public facility in the north of the city, or to build a completely new and original district (the planetary botanical garden) but to create, in the site identified for the event, a model which may serve as reference for a new relationship between the urban sphere and the rural one. This is the challenge we are facing, and on which there is still a lot to be discussed, especially because it is a decisive challenge in relation to the decisions on what to do after the Expo.
M.B.:  What we will do for the Expo must remain as demonstration of the potentials of agriculture and the rural areas surrounding a city.
Above all, Milan will be given a botanical and agricultural park, a large theme park on the bioclimatic conditions on the planet, areas dedicated to agricultural cultivation and production for distribution and consumption on a local levels, areas where the natural environment is restored. Residential areas, and all the other functions which are complementary to farming, will naturally also be included. If we consider the potentials of a space vaunting these qualities, we may easily imagine many scenarios of interaction with the structures of the Trade Fair, which may in the future organize an important event dedicated to agriculture and food, and which could easily, if connected to the Expo site, become an international reference on the subject.
Also the world of scientific research could refer to the Centre on Sustainable Development, and establish a venue in the area; it would not be hard to obtain public and private funding for such an initiative, not to mention the valuable international relations which could easily be established already on the occasion of the Expo. But also the Expo village will remain as a residential area of very high quality, with views of the green areas and the canal. Some of the theme pavilions may also remain, to be converted to other uses, for instance as studios for the RAI television channels.
Finally, the Triulza farm could become an agricultural centre for the area of Milan and Lombardy, but above all an example of high quality research and food education, forming a network together with all the other public farms which will be rebuilt by 2015, and which will remain as an active and diffused heritage for the entire city. Those who visit the Parc Güell today clearly understand to what extent that project has launched the idea of a botanical and vegetal park forming an essential part of the urban tissue; well, in thirty or fifty years, visiting the Expo site, one may understand that in Milan, in 2015, the prototype of a new and fertile relationship between the urban sphere and the agricultural one, between the city and the rural reality, has been realized.
L.A.: What are the methods and strategies of the team which is working on the overall arrangement of the project?
M.B.: In the first phase, which has lasted from May 2009 to September 2009, the Architecture Advisory Board formed of Stefano Boeri, Ricky Burdett, Jacques Herzog, William McDonough, prepared the Concept Plan for the Expo Milan 2015. Joan Busquets, who has worked principally on the infrastructural themes related to the site, was also part of the Board. After the public presentation of the Concept Plan in September 2009 the Expo company, M.P. Stanca, consulted an ”in-house” design team for the development and translation of the Concept Plan into a Masterplan, a technical document which had to be filed with the BIE (the international body which manages the Expos) by May 2010.
This second phase of the technical preparation of the Masterplan has been conducted principally by the Planning Department of the Expo company, directed by Engineer Gorini, with a work team coordinated by Architect Gatto, formed of 4 Senior Architects, 18 young architects and newly graduated engineers and a number of experienced technicians. During this phase the Advisory Board, with Stefano Boeri, Ricky Burdett and Jacques Herzog has continued to work on the preparation of the Masterplan, supervising the work of the Planning Department and studying certain specific themes in depth. Now that the Masterplan has been delivered in Paris, the Advisory Board will probably continue to supervise the development of the Masterplan and the numerous announcements for the competitions which will be launched for the single projects on the site.
Another theme has concerned the research on the system of greenhouses and agroecosystems, which poses a number of problems in terms of themes, design and time frames; this has been developed by the work team of the Milan Polytechnic (Diap_Multiplicity.Lab), coordinated by Stefano Boeri and by me, in collaboration with the work team of the Agronomy Faculty of the University of Milan, coordinated by Professors Sorlini and Bocchi. Finally, another research team of the Polytechnic, coordinated by Maddalena Bregani and Salvatore Porcaro, is collaborating with the Expo company on the reconstruction of a number of publicly owned farms, based on the model of the Triulza farm, located inside the site, which will become a beacon of excellence in the research and education on food and the epicentre of the territorial network of farms covering the entire municipal territory. The forthcoming design phases and the relative methods and strategies are being discussed at the moment.
S.B.: I would like to add two elements that bear witness to the importance of involving all architects operating in the city in the preparation of projects for the Expo 2015. The BIE has a number of regulations on Universal Expositions which make it necessary to concentrate the even in a specific, enclosed site that meets certain standards. The preparation of this project for the Expo site has been the priority which has absorbed most planning energies until today. However, an Universal Exposition is an opportunity to launch a series of projects across the whole territory of the host city; some of these initiatives may be promoted by the Expo company, others by institutions, and others again by private players. The Expo Company has already announced the creation of a park of 800 hectares, this is the projects which has always been referred to by the press as ”Waterways”, and a series of initiatives in central Milan, the ”Landways”, but there will be many architectural opportunities, and this will represent a unique opportunity for the city. Moreover, the great campaign of architecture competitions for works on the Expo site will represent a unique opportunity, for several generations of architects from all over the world, to tackle a very particular and innovative design theme: “Feeding the Planet, Energy for life”.

Some passages of this interview have been taken from:
Conversation with Stefano Boeri edited by Antonio Borghi in Architetti Lombardi, no. 1-2/2010, pages 37-38.

 

Stefano Boeri, born in 1956, is a Milan-based architect. He is the founder of the international research network Multiplicity (www.multiplicity.it) and teaches Urban Design at Milan Polytechnic. From 2004 to 2007 he was editor in chief of Domus magazine; from September 2007 he is editor in chief of the international magazine Abitare.
His studio in Milan is committed to the research and practice of contemporary architecture and urbanism. Current projects include the design for a multifunctional building for the PACA Region on the Marseilles Waterfront (La Villa); the design to two eco compatible residential towers (il Bosco Verticale); and the project for the Policlinic of Milan, a large scale renovation of one of the city’s most prominent medical centers. Boeri has recently been appointed to the 2015 Milan Expo Architecture Advisory Board in charge of developing the guidelines for the urban transformations to be implemented within the frame of the international event.

Michele Brunello, 1975, architect, lives between Milan and Venice where he is coursing his Ph.D. at the IUAV university and collaborating as associate professor. He has held several lectures in different European universities (HfG Karlsruhe, TU Delft, TU Graz, KAM Creete) and obtained many rewards and recognitions for the work he has developed regarding the Venice lagoon system as a metaphor of the Mediterranean city. Founder of the artistic collectives “attualAmente” and design group “Studioplano”. After having coordinated the project in La Maddalena, he is now collaborating with Stefano Boeri Architetti for the Milan 2015 Expo Masterplan coordinando il gruppo di lavoro del Politecnico d Milano.