Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

Maran: “We expect great design quality for one of the biggest transformations of the coming years”. The future structure of the Olympic airport will be finalized by March

Milan, 10 December 2020 – The international competition for the drafting of the regeneration master plan for the Porta Romana airport is underway. COIMA SGR SpA on behalf of the Porta Romana Fund – reserved alternative real estate mutual investment fund, participated by COIMA ESG City impact fund, Covivio and Prada holding SpA – as successful bidder of the public competitive procedure launched by the FS Italiane Group for the acquisition of the Porta Romana airport, has finalized the preliminary purchase contract for the area - committing itself to the delivery of the Olympic Village as provided for in the agreements made with the Municipality of Milan, the Lombardy Region and FS Sistemi Urbana - and started the process of the international competition for the drafting of the master plan that will redesign the 190 thousand square meter area.

"The development of Porta Romana represents one of the biggest transformations of Milan in the coming years - declares the councilor for Urban and Green Planning Pierfrancesco Maran -. From the Olympic Village which after 2026 will be converted into a university student residence, to the park which will occupy at least half of the entire surface, the master plan will have the task of designing not only fundamental services, but also of making the entire area around the airport much more accessible also through the partial burial of the tracks, we expect large ones results from this competition, capable of reconciling environmental sustainability, design quality and innovation".

The teams participating in the competition will have to propose orientation solutions regarding the system of public spaces, services and greenery, the mending and reconnection of the parts of the city now separated from the airport thanks to the design of a new accessibility and permeability, the morphological structure and general settlement, with particular attention to the relationship with the surrounding context, to the Olympic Village project, to the indicative identification of functions qualifying the new public spaces and services to the neighbourhood, to the definition of a general strategy for the activation of public spaces and of the neighborhood.

Participation in the competition is open to multidisciplinary groups, with particular reference to skills relating to urban planning, landscape, mobility, environmental sustainability and infrastructural design. The judging commission will be made up of 7 full members plus 2 high-profile alternates (two full commissioners and one alternate will be chosen by the tendering body on the basis of lists provided by the Order of Architects PPC of Milan and the Order of Engineers of the Province of Milan, and an effective commissioner will be appointed by the municipal administration, given the presence of priority and strategic contents for the Municipality of Milan. The remaining commissioners will be chosen by the tendering body). The sole person responsible for the competition is the architect. Leopoldo Freyrie, President of the Commission will be Gregg Jones, Design principal of the Pelli Clarke Pelli architects studio, already curator of the volumetric plan of Porta Nuova. The members of the judging commission will be made public by the end of the first phase of the competition.

The Competition is part of the Program Agreement signed in 2017 by the Municipality of Milan, the Lombardy Region, the Italian State Railways (with the Italian Railway Network and FS Sistemi Urbani) for the redevelopment of the seven abandoned railway yards (Farini, Porta Romana, Porta Genova , Greco-Breda, Lambrate, Rogoredo, San Cristoforo), which together cover an area of ​​1 million and 250 thousand square meters of which approximately 200 thousand will remain for railway purposes. This is the largest urban regeneration plan that will affect Milan in the next 20 years, one of the largest projects to mend and enhance the territory in Italy and Europe. For the Romana airport, 164.000 m50 of building area are defined, while XNUMX% of the airport will be dedicated to green areas and public spaces.

The first phase of the competition, which will take place in an open form, will close on 15 January 2020 with a selection of up to 5 candidates. The second phase will close on March 31, 2020 with the choice of the winning project. The master plan selected at the end of the second phase will be subject to subsequent modification and integration, based on the outcomes of the public debate envisaged by the Program Agreement and following a technical analysis of the observations conducted jointly by the tendering body and the Municipality.

The development of the master plan will have to include a large park, which will extend for approximately 100.000 m1.000, around which residences, offices, social housing, student housing and services will be built, interconnected to the entire metropolitan area via the railway and underground stations. Inside the airport COIMA SGR will develop the Olympic Village, which at the end of the competitions will be transformed into student housing with around XNUMX beds, the residential component free and subsidized; Covivio will develop office and service functions; Prada holding SpA, interested above all in the quality of the park, will build a building for laboratory and office use to extend its activities already present in the area. Intesa San Paolo will support COIMA SGR, Covivio and Prada holding SpA in the operation and will finance the development.

All information relating to the competition and how to participate can be found at https://www.coima.com/it/media/news/concorso-di-architettura-porta-romana-milano.