Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

Project
The project “HERITACT - Research and innovation on cultural heritage and cultural and creative industries” introduces innovative solutions as well as artistic-cultural practices to support environmental and cultural sustainability, as well as aimed at strengthening cultural and creative industries, through community awareness and decision-making in different European urban areas. The project will focus on developing methodologies and tools for activating European heritage through engaging, artistic and creative experiences.

Start date: 01/03/2023
End date: 28/02/2026

Partnership
University of Patras, IAAC, Ideas for Change, Things, Municipality of Eleusis, MENTOR, Municipality of Ballina, University College Dublin, ACT, Municipality of Milan (partner), LAND Italia Srl, Stefano Boeri Architetti, University of the Aegean

Aims
The HERITACT project aims to work on the recognition and strong historical identity that some places generate in the inhabitants, thus strengthening their sense of belonging to the community and proposing valorization actions from a sustainability point of view. In this sense, different places belonging to different historical-artistic legacies were selected, such as the site of Eleusis in Greece or the farmhouses located in the territory of the Municipality of Milan.

Actions
In Milan the cultural landscape identified is that of the 'cascine', understood as part of the living historical heritage and as cultural and recreational centers located in key peripheral neighborhoods, now enclosed in the urbanized space. These centres, given their position, act as a connection between central and peripheral areas, between urban space and agricultural countryside. While many of them still retain their agricultural vocation, others located closer to urban services or within neighborhoods have become cultural and social aggregators offering a wide range of services, from environmental education to leisure and gastronomy. The idea is to propose an integrated recreational offer that can guarantee inclusive solutions with the existing surrounding realities to reconfigure these places as attractors and central places for neighborhood life. The concept of the project focuses on four farmhouses (Cascina Campazzo in the Ticinello park, Cascina Nosedo, Cascina Biblioteca in the Lambro park and Cascina S. Ambrogio) characterized by potential not fully exploited, strategic position and publicly owned assets in order to establish laboratories there innovative housing to experiment with healthy lifestyles, art-culture-technology integration, socially equitable educational and business models and climate adaptation practices; one of these farms will be chosen to carry out the pilot case linked to the project.

Expected results
Reveal unrecognized opportunities across cultural heritage to maximize co-benefits and synergies, guide the management of inevitable trade-offs, support decision-making, which in turn can drive the building of more sustainable and economically equitable cities, social and environmental.