Upon arriving in Milan, I was immediately struck by the size of the city and the number of people crammed into such a small space. The trains were packed, the subway was full of passengers even at odd times, and the coffee shops were always full, but always worth the wait. The amazing combination of new fashion and ideas in a place rich with history was exciting and different than any other experience I’ve had. Visiting Duomo, I was even more surprised at the amount of people, and pigeons, you could fit into a small area. Although I don’t have an extensive background in design, the culture of the city is tightly bound with the historic buildings in the area. The shear amount of people in the city was clear when a few of us attended a concerted and were packed into a small park in the middle of the city. It was not only interesting to see the night life, but also the combination of beautiful historic buildings in a park hosting a DJ filled with people young and old.
After seemingly just arriving in the city, I traveled to Cinque Terre with Karina and Linda where we spent most of our time near the shore in La Spezia. The beautiful atmosphere was much different than Milan and traveling was a bit harder due to the fact that fewer people spoke English. However, the scenery was a beautiful mixture of old castles and pastel apartments which captured the unique style of the city.
The time goes by so quickly here… It feels like I just got here three days ago but I’ve been here for well over a week.
Within the whirlwind of the week I got the opportunity to attend some of the Milano Arch Week lectures + exhibits.
one of the ads around the city.
The first lecture I saw featured Urban Good’s Charlie Peel. He spoke about the city of London and its future with regards to education, nature, and recreation. He brought up the issue that Londoners didn’t even know that their city was so green — they have about one tree per person and it is the most biodiverse area in the United Kingdom with around 1400 species. In order to educate and encourage Londoners to spend time in their green spaces, their team collaborated and researched to then make a map that showed all the natural areas (parks, hiking trails, gardens, woodlands, etc.) in a neat, fun and interactive way.
This map featured information on the wildlife, estimated land use, and more facts and figures with a cool and cohesive color palette. I thought this idea was very unique because it strayed away from the digital age that we live in. There is something about having this physical object as opposed to an app on your phone… it brings you back in time almost so that you can appreciate what’s around you.
a close-up of the map.
Because of Urban Good and their collaborators, these issues have made its way to the Mayor of London, who allotted £2M for making the spaces accessible and make some improvements. London is now on its way to become a “National Park City” by 2019.
I think that this is really cool because everyone is forgetting about all of the nature around us. This is a unique chance to appreciate everything. This lecture was eye-opening and its interesting to see what is developed in London within the next couple of years as well as the “green-ification” of Milano’s city center.
If you want to order this map you can get it here for free from the Urban Good website.
You can also find out more information on the National Park City here.
My first week in Milan, and I already feel like I like I’m a local (minus the speaking Italian part). Honestly, I thought Italian would be easier to learn since Spanish was my first language – BUT I WAS WRONG. Besides my cringe worthy ordering of croissants and gelato- this week has been a whirlwind.
To start, I had a 12 hour layover in NYC where I actually visited some really cool design events:
“Sight Unseen Offsite” in New York
When I got to Milan, I was hit with the scent of Jasmine. It’s amazing how the city perfumes itself with these flowers.
I quickly became extremely close to my housemates, and it felt as though we had known each other forever. Throughout the week, we visited different design studios, museums, and beautiful feats of architecture.
On top of the Duomo!
My favorite parts of the week however, were the free times we had. We hosted a dinner at our apartment, explored the city, got off on the wrong subway stop, explored some more, had a dance party with LUSH workers, went shopping, got drinks on the Naviglio, and SO much more.
I’ll take both pls & thnxLinda testing out le water
Linda, Baylea, and I even took our first adventure outside of Milan to Cinque Terre! And yes- we got on the wrong train (and freaked out a bit), but is it really an adventure if you don’t get lost at least once?
This weekend I visited the northern Italian cities of Genoa and Turin. Other than Milan, they are the other two cities that make up Italy’s Industrial Triangle. Walking around Genoa it was really interesting to experience the city and see how it was laid out. Unlike Milan or Turin, Genoa is built on steep hills overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, and it serves as Italy’s biggest port. While most of the city is laid out fairly randomly, and built along winding roads that curl around the hills, the center of town was organized around a large fountain with large boulevards radiating away from it. Along these streets were dozens of ornate buildings with massive arcades.
Turin, like Genoa, had a central boulevard with arcades. However, Turin was much more organized in terms of city planning. It was the first capital of Italy, from 1865 to 1869, and this was quite clear from the main street Via Roma, that spanned from a vibrant train station through a central square and multiple eras of architecture before ending at a giant plaza with a fountain and cathedral.
A key difference as well between the two cities was that Genoa had far more immigrants and was more aimed at tourists, especially near the harbor. Turin looked the same as it probably did several decades ago, with the immigrant neighborhoods outside of the central business district. In the early 1900s, part of the city was leveled to expand Via Roma and its arcades to connect it with the train station. The architecture style looked very similar to Milan’s Centrale Station as they were both done under Mussolini.
The overnight train from Paris was packed; six travelers stacked into 6 bunk beds for 11 hours with frequent stops and persistent blue light. Barely enough space for my body, I arrived in Milan exhausted.. Milano Centrale welcomed me at six in the morning with a vegan brioche and a soy cappuccino. I started my sketch notebook and noted the the travel mishaps and the surprises of Paris in the days previous.
Overnight train from Paris to Milan.
Discussing the Futurists this week led me to examine my own past. As a teenager, I was inspired by similar propaganda which called for a break with history, though strongly against the misogyny and nationalism of the Marinetti. Looking back at the writings from one of the manifestos from my teenage years, I found writings in accordance with the Futurists, with the same sense of urgency as the Futurist Manifesto.
“It is thus that each of us is dominated by history: the past lies upon us like a dead hand, guiding and controlling as if from the grave. At the same time as it gives the individual a conception of herself, an “identity,” it piles weight upon her that she must fight to shake off if she is to remain light and free enough to continue reinventing her life and herself. It is the same for the artist: even the most challenging innovations eventually become crutches and clichés. Once an artist has come up with one good solution for a creative problem, it is hard for her to break free of it to conceive of other possible solutions. That is why most great artists can only offer a few really revolutionary ideas: they become trapped by the very systems they create, just as these systems trap those who come after. It is hard to do something entirely new when one finds oneself up against a thousand years of painting history and tradition. And this is the same for the lover, for the mathematician and the adventurer: for all, the past is an adversary to action in the present, an ever-increasing force of inertia that must be overcome.”
And so I’ve found myself suspended between the overwhelming presence of design in the city and the gritty underbelly of radical politics. Professor insists that design is a means to a political end, but I’m still trying to figure out how design, which is typically reserved for turning materials into commodities, can be related to the things I care about. Regardless, I’m excited to be in Milan, surrounded by both well-considered chairs and insurrectionary graffiti.
Tear down the prisons and the world that creates them.
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Aside from the big ideas of design and revolution, I’ve taken a few moments to find the city on my own. The ossuary in the middle of the city was a literal tower of bones and skulls of the poor who died in the local hospital. It’s only a few blocks away from the Duomo, off to the side of another cathedral.
San Bernardino alle Ossa
A quick train ride brought my housemate Robert and me to Genoa, home of Christopher Columbus and focaccia. We left the train station and ducked into a narrow alley which climbed up a hill. “There must be a castle at the top, right?” I asked Robert when I realized I was already drenched in sweat. There was in fact a castle at the top, and we visited the collection of an Italian colonizer who had collected artifacts from all over the world.
Castello D’Albertis Museum of World Cultures
Descending back into the port city, we grabbed some food from the grocery and sat on the stairs leading up to the Cattedrale di San Lorenzo, a surprising building from the 12th century made of black and white checkered marble.
We walked up over 700 steps today to get to the roof of the Duomo. Absolutely worth it!
This morning we had a lecture about the futurists and then we went to the Duomo area and did some light shopping! We got some coffee and found a shop called the Flying Tiger (which i’m pretty sure is a globally known store. Its kind of like target. Everyone loved it but I didn’t buy anything because its not really an Italian store). Then we climbed to the top of the duomo and it gave me flash backs to climbing to the top of the Eiffel tower years ago. We got to the top, everyone totally drenched in sweat, and it was spectacular! You could see the whole city from up there and the detail in the building was absolutely jaw dropping. We even had a class lecture up on the roof. Out front of the duomo the pigeons have taken over. They will just fly all around you and one even landed on my head today and scared me so bad.
Learning about the Futurists and Piero Portaluppi has been so inspiring and really showed me a lot about the foundations and history of Milan. It has been especially fun to be able to recognize and and discuss the things around the city that I have learned about in the past in Dr. Penicks class like art nouveau and cubism and how these movements influenced Italian architecture and culture.
We will be attending some of the exhibitions/events as a group, but the Triennale has so many events listed for May/June that we will not have time to incorporate them all, so perhaps you can attend some independently in the evening, or over the weekends.
