C40 Piazzale Loreto: LAND part of the winning team

The team led by Ceetrus Nhood won the tender for the urban renewal of Piazzale Loreto in Milan with the LOC—LORETO OPEN COMMUNITY project, initiated by Reinventing Cities. The Milan City Council and C40 promoted this international tender with the aim of urban transformation through projects that are in tune with the local community, resilience, and regeneration.

A decisive factor in Ceetrus Nhood’s success was the choice of an integrated sustainability approach, achieved under the direction of Arcadis Italia, which provided technical coordination for the entire project, environmental consulting, design and development management, and engineering.

The project was achieved through the combined contributions of Metrogramma Milano (Design Team coordinator), Mobility In Chain, Studio Andrea Caputo, LAND, Temporiuso, and Squadrati Srl. It aspires to become a model for living in Milan that promotes public and collective spaces. The LOC will transform Piazzale Loreto from a large traffic junction into a green, open-air square connected to NoLo to ensure the Corso Buenos Aires, Viale Monza, and Viale Padova axis continuity.

Skyforest. LOC, Ceetrus Nhood

“The design of the new urban landscape of Piazzale Loreto is based on the reconquest of public space on a human scale. The circular accessibility, the articulation of the single architectural bodies, and the guaranteed permeability lead to a single large iconic element of urban forestation: the Sky Forest. Crossed by all the flows generated, this green heart of the project is recognisable from the outside and perceptible from the inside. A green heart can gather all the flows’ dynamism through social inclusion and relations with the urban context. In this way, the project becomes a promoter of a wider redevelopment of the side streets and surrounding areas: 500 trees and 4250 square metres of green areas are an important contribution to the new green vision of Milan. ” – Andreas Kipar

The LOC will be an activity incubator and hub of attraction, a new urban district for local commerce. It will include co-working facilities, a local nursery school, a lively socio-cultural venue, and much more. It will become a three-tier system of squares connecting the street level, subway train access, and the building roofs. Stairways and ramps will provide a fluid connection between the street and underground levels, and the building on Via Porpora will be integrated into the piazza layout.

LOC, Ceetrus Nhood

The need to plant trees and recreate green areas inside the city is one of the main objectives of the LOC, in line with the Milan City Council’s programmes. The buildings that emerge from the master plan resemble “green icebergs”, shaped by the forces of architectural design for public spaces.

The Loreto Open Community will recuperate more than 10,000 m² of green public space with canopy trees planted directly in the ground. This will enable the new piazza to establish a local natural microclimate and an oasis for citizens in their free time.