Archive Exhibit Inhabit
An extension of CASVA that refuses to become an isolated object: archive, exhibition, work and housing are folded into the existing rhythms of QT8 and the landscape of Monte Stella. Concept Archive, exhibition spaces, ateliers and housing form one continuous intervention beside the former QT8 market. The project borrows the district's structural rhythms, pilotis and indirect routes instead of placing another autonomous object in the landscape. QT8 was conceived by Piero Bottoni as an experimental garden city and presented at the 8th Milan Triennale in 1947. Its low-density buildings, public facilities and continuous open spaces sit around Monte Stella, the artificial hill built from the debris of wartime Milan. The district remains a catalogue of modern Italian urbanism: linear blocks, towers, detached houses and terraces coexist within a regular grid and a shared landscape. The project begins from this urban grammar. Its position, geometry and circulation reinterpret the neighbourhood's recurring sequences of raised entrances, porticoes and indirect pedestrian routes. The former municipal market, now occupied by CASVA, is no longer left as an isolated object: it becomes the first element of a new cultural and residential system extending towards Monte Stella. System An exposed-concrete platform connects CASVA to Monte Stella. Access unfolds through stairs, raised surfaces and thresholds that follow the existing topography. A slender portico continues the structural rhythm of the market and leads to the new public ground, which works as the hinge between museum, archive, ateliers, housing and landscape. The museum occupies the changing level below the platform and opens both to the upper public surface and the lower urban plaza. Internal patios bring light, vegetation and public life into its mass, allowing exhibition space to extend beyond the enclosed rooms. The archive develops in continuity with this foundation, while the ateliers face a more intimate courtyard where production and presentation can overlap. The perimeter portico mediates between the ateliers and their courtyard, while the elevated platform acts as the project's central public room. From here the different volumes are read together and the district can be observed from a new level. Circulation is never reduced to a corridor: it becomes the element that binds the existing market, cultural programme and landscape. A linear residential block completes the intervention and balances the height of the surrounding buildings. Its reinforced-concrete structure maintains constructive continuity with the museum, while light ceramic cladding and movable timber screens soften its presence. The screens regulate sunlight, privacy and views towards Monte Stella; flared balconies draw more light into the apartments and give depth to the facade. The same structural spacing governs platform, portico and housing. Concrete mass is cut by courtyards, glazed surfaces and filters, turning a group of different programmes into one permeable urban organism. The extension therefore acts less as an addition to CASVA than as a renewed connection between the market, the residential fabric and the park. Credits PROJECT TEAM: ALESSANDRA CASTELLI, GIULIA CAGLIO, FEDERICO MARTORANA. PROFESSORS: Stamatina Kousidi, Mario Scaglia. TUTORS: Matteo Lorenzo, Martina Simonati.
