Foreword
Competition organisers
Buildner is pleased to present the results to the Milan Affordable Housing Challenge!
This competition is part of Buildner’s Affordable Housing series, in partnership with ARCHHIVE BOOKS, showcasing projects that invent new means for driving down housing prices. Designers were tasked with proposing a flexible, innovative, pilot- phase concept for affordable housing within and around Milan, Italy. Buildner’s Affordable Housing design series posits that there is no one right answer to making housing affordable. Today, a host of new ideas and platforms are enabling people to own or purchase homes. These creative methods include everything from community co-living facilities, to 3D-printed homes, stackable modular homes, new zoning policies and new forms of transit-oriented development.
This competition tasked participants with proposing design-related solutions to the city’s housing crisis. They were encouraged to submit flexible solutions to accommodate a range of unit sizes including families, single professionals, and couples. There was no set competition site or scale, and participants were encouraged to be as creative as possible. The jury sought projects that challenge typical ideas of housing, design, and the community at large, while at the same time maintaining a practical element that could potentially see these designs realized.
Buildner collaborated with a regional and international interdisciplinary jury panel: Gian Luca Barone is an Associate Director of Zaha HadidArchitects in London, who has worked on projects including the Milan City Life Tower and the headquarters of Fendi, consulted for the Province of Milan planning authority, and graduated with a degree in architecture with a Masters from Milan Polytechnic; Paolo Brescia and Tommaso Principi are architects and co-founders of Milan-based OBR; Grazia Comai is a Senior Landscape Architect at London-based Townshend Landscape Architects and is a registered landscape architect with over ten years’ experience working on a diverse range of public realm projects; Piermattia Cribiori is a co- founder of Milan-based Atelierzero, and graduated from the Politecnico di Milano in 2009; Søren Leth is a partner and co-founder of SLETH based in Aarhus, Denmark; Francesca Perani is an architect and designer who established Francesca Perani Enterprise, an award winning studio based in Bergamo, Italy and co-founded the activist project RebelArchitette advocating for equality in Architecture; Maria Alessandra Segantini is the founding partner and director of C+S Architects, with offices in Treviso, Italy and London, UK, named Italian Architect of the Year 2022, and received the award of the Italian Chamber of Architects (CNAPPC); and Michele Rossi is a partner and co-founder of Milan-based Park Associati, as well as a teacher at the Politecnico di Milano where he is also as a member of the Board of Advisors.
Buildner and its jury panel thank all individuals and teams that submitted proposals.
+172 points Buildner University Rankings!
Jury feedback summary
Milano Super Flat rethinks the development strategy for the courtyards within Milan’s typical residential blocks. Milan’s urban grid has plentiful open spaces at the center of blocks. But these, the proposal claims, are at risk of suffering from detrimental vertical constructions that block light and air from apartments that give onto the courtyards. Further, such constructions remove what was once intended as common spaces for residents. The radical proposal considers building downward, excavating the below grade level within courtyards across the city and filling this subterranean space with dense rows of new apartments topped with gardens. Such a solution could revive the city with new shared spaces and offer much-needed additional housing stock.