In recent decades, the city of Milan has grown in terms of public and private investment. A certain flexibility granted to large real estate investors has, in return, guaranteed the birth of new services for the city and the public space generated by these urban transformations is necessarily an expression of this pluralism.
To the historical pieces of the city, from Enzo Mari’s Panettone designed for the city hall in the 1980s as a dissuader but often used to sit in case of lack of benches, to the classic wooden seat Doussie, up to those “monuments” as the fountain dedicated to Sandro Pertini by Aldo Rossi or Music storage and sitting by Armand Pierre Fernández in Parco Sempione. To these new objects that inhabit the public space were added and contribute to a new urban image.
Urban inventory: the iconic benches of Milan
Auteur or not, produced in series or site specific, a collection of fixed historical and brand new seatings that mark the urban landscape of Milan.
The seat on the platform is composed of a slab of serizzo glands five cm thick rounded at the ends and resting on metal legs with a metal cicrcular section.
Photo Amodiovalerio Verde, Waiting
Some green benches have been transformed into red benches according to the initiative of the Municipality of Milan as a symbol of rejection of violence against women. Each corporation can propose to the Municipality to transform a bench by providing independently to its painting, packaging and installation of the plate, and committing itself to maintain and restore in case of deterioration.
Photo Albina Davletshina
A triangular fountain that flows into a large basin and a horizontal cut that allows a glimpse of the Via dei Girdini, draw the mute side of the volume.
Photo Albina Davletshina
Photo Andea Ferrario, source Unsplash
Photo Andrea Ferrario, source Unsplash
Photo Mario Sartori, LIGHTS piazza Gae Aulenti
Photo Mario Sartori, Benches in curves
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- Bianca Pichler
- 12 February 2020
- Milan
Street furniture is by its nature built with resistant materials, well anchored to the ground to prevent someone from stealing them, easy to maintain and cheap in their construction. But first of all, to avoid the experience of an inhospitable and desolate city, they must be intelligent objects, ‘open’ and flexible in their use. The city’s ground thus becomes a great interface that can be regenerated, updated and able to give the citizen the feeling of a living space in which to recognize oneself.
By definition, public space belongs primarily to citizens, to those who appropriate it, those who love it and those who own it physically and mentally, as Ugo La Pietra asked us to back in the ’70s through his original and creative research on the city.
Starting from the assumption that ‘living’ means “being everywhere at home” and in the wake of the situationist practices of the ’60s, La Pietra seeks a contamination between private and public to eliminate the barrier between these two spheres we live in. Thus, through a reinterpretation and reconversion of urban furniture, the service structures are transformed into equipment for the domestic space: street signs become coat hangers, mailboxes become large piggy banks, kiosks become bedrooms, the fountains are converted into domestic toilets and street lighting into abat-jours.
According to La Pietra, a creative and liberating manipulation of the territory will transform every corner of the city into a potential corner for living.
The strategy for which collective space provides both citizens’ participation and individual responsibility is a design path that we see happening more and more, from municipal administrations to other organizations active in the territory. More professional figures are called upon to guide groups of citizens in planning processes, in the hope of defining new urban scenarios that are more open, inclusive and visionary.
The subway is like a big underground city. In 1964 the architects Franco Albini, Franca Helg and Antonio Piva were commissioned to define the complete layout of the stations of Lines 1 and 2 of the Milan underground. They gave recognition and character to the standardised environments of the underground, converting them into a real "public interior", through the standardisation of materials, shapes, colours and construction details.
The seat on the platform is composed of a slab of serizzo glands five cm thick rounded at the ends and resting on metal legs with a metal cicrcular section.
100kg bollard of cement often used by citizens even to sit. It has also become a furnishing element in many other Italian cities after Milan. Famous are those transformed into penguins by the artist Pao and the soft version designed by Giulio Iacchetti.
The bench consists of sixteen strips of green painted wood with a backrest and a galvanized steel structure. A concrete base is laid to which the bench is then anchored with screws and bolts.
Some green benches have been transformed into red benches according to the initiative of the Municipality of Milan as a symbol of rejection of violence against women. Each corporation can propose to the Municipality to transform a bench by providing independently to its painting, packaging and installation of the plate, and committing itself to maintain and restore in case of deterioration.
The "inhabited" monument of Aldo Rossi is a small urban project for Milan, located between Via Montenapoleone and Via Manzoni. The sculptural volume, sum of grey ashlars and pink Candoglia marble, stands between the aligned fronts of buildings, trees, lamps and benches, becoming the scene of the square or the stalls from which to observe it.
A triangular fountain that flows into a large basin and a horizontal cut that allows a glimpse of the Via dei Girdini, draw the mute side of the volume.
in the last few years Milan's tram and bus stops have been equipped with galvanised steel and glass shelters, where to wait for public transport. They are equipped with a seat, lighting, information board and display of waiting times.
The seat consists of a horizontal element in polished Montorfano granite and vertical supports without side overhangs in serizzo bush-hammered glands. It is used in the ancient formation areas and in special cases such as in Bicocca area.
It is located along Via Paolo Sarpi and in the areas of specific requalification. It is made of five oak wood planks with corten steel sheet supports.
Music Accumulation and Sitting was created in 1973, on the occasion of the XV Triennale di Milano, as part of the project "Contact Art-City" which aimed to involve the citizens through a new usability of works of art. Arman Pierre Fernández created a small theatre: irons emerge from the concrete and draw profiles of chairs all different from each other in style and form. The iron from the reinforcement material of the concrete becomes an element of ornament and identity of each seat. From the base of the conductor's podium, on the other hand, emerge moulds of trumpets, clarinets and other musical instruments.
The seat adapts to the circular shape of the raised square. It is like a continuous ribbon shaped in a plastic section that contains the water surface of the center of the square.
A continuous bench follows the sinuous shape of the hill, drawing its ground attachment.
Piazza del Liberty is excavated and transformed into a large urban amphitheatre overlooking a fountain. Open 24 hours a day, it becomes a space for the city, a venue for events and film screenings.
A brick and stone wall connects the two walks to the water and to the city level through the frequent ramps and stairs. The whole area becomes a place of rest and walking as well as for the organization and holding of events and outdoor shows.