Milan, once the center of Italy’s industrial region, is today Italy’s leading financial center and a global center for fashion and design. Currently experiencing a boom of urban redevelopment, the city’s post-industrial urban voids now provide exceptional opportunities for ambitious architectural and urban innovation.

Bovisa, originally located on the outskirts of Milan, initially benefited from a strong network of railway lines connecting it to the city and beyond. Paradoxically, the conditions that once allowed it to flourish now isolate it from the rest of the city hampering its development. Separated from the surrounding neighborhoods, the site suffers from a surfeit of infrastructure.

Further impeding the site’s development, the ground is heavily contaminated – a lasting burden of the site’s industrial history. In order to become suitable for development, the site requires intensive remediation.

In recent years, numerous master plans and attempts to redevelop the site have been proposed with no results. Unable to overcome the site’s many constraints, Bovisa has languished undeveloped, disconnected from the thriving areas surrounding it, a void in the urban fabric of Milan.