The effects of an uncertain project. Testing the device of masterplan as habitat of negotiation

Abstract

In the last years we are witnessing a new interest to architecture as a social practice and the tendency to acknowledge the collective nature of design. From this point of view the design activity needs to be focus more on the performative nature of the process and on the objectives to produce multiple effects, physical and not only. The design process involves many players (professionals, administrations, citizens …) with different roles (promoters, beneficiaries, codesigners, facilitators …). The role of architectural design is repositioned within a participatory multi-actor development process and, coherently, its tools seem to need innovation. The masterplan can be a fertile one. Its potentialities are investigated in the West Road Project, a device for activating networks and public spaces through the diffused neglected areas in the west part of the City of Milan. It is a research in action led by a multidisciplinary group of researchers and staff of local cooperative. The masterplan is imagined as a habitat of negotiations through the issue of space that host the multiple events coming up from territories and give them a broader framework of meanings. It is not a fixed planimetric scheme of volumes. At the same time the purpose is to encourage to action the territories through the participatory process.