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New European Bauhaus
Project

Porto di Mare Eco-District

Is it possible to combine economic, social and environmental aspects in a sustainable urban regeneration process? Can algorithms and modelling strategies match and satisfy community needs?

Porto di Mare Eco-District © European Union
Porto di Mare Eco-District
© European Union, 2021

 

Is it possible to combine economic, social and environmental aspects in a sustainable urban regeneration process? Can algorithms and modelling strategies match and satisfy community needs?

Porto di Mare Eco-District (Milan) combines a multi-scale design and a multi-layered modelling approach, focused on a bottom-up holistic approach, acting on people and transforming users into more sensible agents. ??

The concept won the 2021 New European Bauhaus Rising Star award in the category of "Regenerated urban and rural spaces."

Their main goal is to reconnect the metropolitan area of Milan with the adjoining countryside through the development of a human-scaled district. The complex also aspires to act as an incubator where citizens can gather, bridging the gap between old and new.

Porto di Mare aims to be a self-sufficient Eco-District where people can readily obtain all commodities, from supermarkets to schools, sports facilities, and the metro station, connecting the city centre—all at a 15-minute walking distance.

Using IMM and parametric BIM tools, the project applied different analyses to the area for both the district as a whole and the individual building that makes it up. IMM considers cities as Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) consisting of different interacting subsystems: environmental, economic, social, and cultural. ???

After identifying the main underlying strategies, the project focuses on the Food District and Transportation Hub, a modern piazza where residents and visitors may connect and exchange food, knowledge, and cultures. The result is a 360-degree replicable approach for similar urban-rural contexts.

The creators explored a complete integration of infrastructural systems for sustainable urban regeneration to design an eco-district, such as mobility, building, green-blue infrastructure, physical flows of energy⚡, water?, and waste?️.

Eco-District is an opportunity to illustrate the potential implications of a sustainable regeneration process on territorial low-carbon energy planning strategies, with a significant impact on a larger part of the city.

? © European Union