Ceci n’est pas un parc is a research and project proposal focusing on those areas defined as terrains vagues or tiers paysages: urban forgotten territories that are excluded from the daily dynamics of the city.
We specifically addressed the former railway yard of San Cristoforo in Milan, an abandoned area that hosts the concrete skeleton of a never-completed project of the architect Aldo Rossi. This area is at the edge of the city, in a suburb that fades into the country landscape of Parco Agricolo Sud. Here nature has retaken the space, growing freely and cohabitating with the anthropic remnants, creating a new kind of wilderness. Mineral and natural meld, composing a new landscape.
To fully understand the dynamics of this place, we literally left our state of ordinary and “well-behaved” citizens. We got ourselves dirty. We walked the entire landscape, and we explored it during all four seasons. The intention is to associate the traditional scientific and objective methods of reading and mapping with a more poetic approach. Here, the cartography is not limited by the representation of physical and objective values as they are traditionally intended; we attribute the same importance to nature, architecture, city, and perceptions.
Our park is far from the traditional definition of a park: our goal is to not over-impose a defined masterplan idea. The free and undefined nature of this space invites us to keep its characteristics of vagueness, potentiality, and hospitality, working in a way that is closer to a strategy, to a process. Here, relations and interactions between different elements merge into a new environment. This is a new landscape that stands between the influence of nature and a hinted structure. Our challenge is to provide a light system of infrastructure that makes possible infinite possibilities.
To see the process archive, please visit magmaprocesso.tumblr.com.
To browse the book, please visit bit.ly/2cEC2dN.
