Ex Macello and Milan’s market area transformed

As the Salone del Mobile returned after years of setbacks due to force majeure, there was a palpable buzz throughout the city, with long queues from the very first day of the design week. All eyes were on the well-established Alcova event, which has generated excitement around an apparently new, temporary design district. Despite its temporary (if not precarious) nature, Ex Macello has already hosted several successful design events and is on track to become a cultural and design hub for years to come. Milan’s southeastern quadrant is teeming with a variety of attractions, and over the years design has made several appearances there, leaving traces and dormant seeds that have begun to blossom again this year.

In September 1988, the avant-garde and nonconformist company Pallucco, led by the eponymous artist, designer, and entrepreneur Paolo Pallucco, held a historic two-year event in the abandoned former slaughterhouse. To this day, the most lucid and attentive memories still recall the event as a rare occurrence that essentially inaugurated what is now widely known as the “Fuorisalone”. The former slaughterhouse complex, Ex Macello, still stands as a testament to a bygone era of Milan’s “cittadella annonaria”. The area is dotted with Art Nouveau buildings, including the Palazzina Liberty in Largo Marinai d’Italia. It was built in the early 1900s and included general markets, large warehouses, and trading centers for various food products, such as fruits, vegetables, fish, and flowers. Other notable structures were the Frigoriferi Milanesi and the Palazzo del Ghiaccio.

All these service architectures gravitated around the Porta Vittoria station, which served as a logistics hub with express trains, making it the fastest way to distribute fresh food to wholesalers and retailers, and ultimately to the citizens of Milan. In the early 2000s, however, the station was demolished and buried as a stop on the rail line. Following Pallucco’s first bold intervention, design quickly infiltrated the area through a series of “raids”. In addition to the Palazzina Liberty, which, despite its disuse, is better preserved and has hosted the Fuorisalone on several occasions (most notably in 2004, when Abitare magazine organized an event dedicated to the then “emerging” designers Patricia Urquiola, Fabio Novembre, and Beppe Riboli), the area has seen several locations hosting design events over the past two decades.

The Frigoriferi Milanesi, now a multipurpose space bearing the same name, is home to various institutions and companies in the art and culture industries. The building, dating back to 1899, offers a glimpse into industrial archaeology. Similarly, Spazio Tertulliano, formerly known as the NIL28 creative district, is an urban enclave with connected courtyards and views of former production spaces that have been repurposed for various arts. The East End Studios is another sought-after location in the world of design, fashion, and entertainment. It was made possible by the conversion of the former “Caproni di Taliedo” aircraft factory, which operated in the early 1900s.

We must also mention Macao, an urban reappropriation project that began in 2012 with the occupation of Torre Galfa, Palazzo Citterio, and BASE in the Tortona area, and culminated in a long stay at the Palazzina della Borsa delle Carni in the Ex Macello complex. Although the experience closed permanently in 2021, it was a place that produced culture from the bottom up, with collective and alternative formulas. For decades, this heritage has been forgotten while the city was rapidly advancing. As we turn our attention to the future of Milan’s popular Calvairate district, we’d like to highlight three major urban redevelopment projects that will make this area highly sought after.

Interestingly, these buildings were constructed over a century ago to accommodate the arrival and storage of primary goods for the city. Therefore, it’s fascinating to observe how design provides an intriguing means of reconnecting the past with the future. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that Alcova chose to settle this year on the lot slated for a major real estate transformation. In 2021, the site, now renamed “Aria,” won the Reinventing Cities bid by the City of Milan, with top designers such as Snøhetta, Barreca & La Varra, and Cino Zucchi participating. The former slaughterhouse area will undergo effective and permanent redevelopment with subsidized, student and social housing, public services, commercial spaces, artist ateliers, a branch of the Museo della Scienza e della Tecnologia, and the new campus of the IED – Istituto Europeo di Design.

Just a few meters away, Foody, Milan’s new agrifood market, is scheduled for completion in 2025. Already Italy’s first wholesale market and one of the most important in Europe, it will become an agrifood hub and attraction pole for the supply chain. The market will offer a true “City of Taste”, following an innovative model that combines the wholesale sale of fresh products and direct consumption on-site, complete with restaurants and entertainment venues. The new logistics pavilions are almost complete, but sadly, some of the remarkable historic pavilions from the 1965 construction designed by city engineers Amorosi, Parrella, and Cattorini will be demolished. These buildings are often overlooked as anonymous architecture, but fortunately, one pavilion will remain as a memorial of this historic piece of the modern city and as a venue for public activities. Finally, just a few meters north of the Ex Macello, the long-awaited Biblioteca Europea di Informazione e Cultura (BEIC, “European library of information and culture”) is expected to be completed in 2026, following a new competition held in 2020 that redefined the fate of a previous one from the early 2000s.

We would like to conclude by highlighting one of the projects showcased at Alcova this year, which we believe perfectly embodies the long and rich history of this part of the city. Frantoio Sociale is a research project developed by Studio GISTO and hund.studio that aims to promote alternative practices of transformation and reuse of disused building materials through workshops and events. At the heart of the project is a transportable crushing machine that can transform waste materials into new raw materials suitable for a wide range of uses. The debris of this incredible place is thus transformed into secondary raw materials (as they say) that designers can use to create new products. This process closes the circle, and with a slight change in course, a new, more environmentally conscious design cycle is opened and revitalized.