Dropcity is a space for architectural and design possibilities. Encapsulating over 10.000sqm across 28 to-date-abandoned tunnels below Milan’s Central Station train tracks, the project (launched this past Milanese Design Week with a temporarily but rich line-up of installations and public programme), is set to be completed in 2024 and will feature galleries, workshops, carpentry, robotics and advanced prototyping laboratories. The fact that this great resource was abandoned until now is part of a “collective amnesia” according to Andrea Caputo, the founder of this new Centre for Architecture and Design who conceived the project as early as 2018.

The projects’ connection to the American utopian communities inspired by the work of Buckminster Fuller is direct, explains Caputo. “The American Drop City¹ emerged spontaneously, with a strong sensitivity towards its surroundings, including the meanings given by the Native Americans.” The Milanese Dropcity is, therefore, eager to respect the existing territory in Via Sammartini and concentrate on principles of sustainability and scientific research like its American counterpart. Furthermore, he explains that the original inhabitants of that City realized DIY solar panels demonstrating that “one can produce rich content and demonstrate sensitivity towards sustainable themes with scarce, simple resources”. These reflections lead to another important element of the new Dropcity: the free access of professional tools for young practitioners at the start of their careers (including the rich library that will occupy one of the tunnels) but also a wood workshop and so on. This new City will be, in fact, linked to Short Production Branches where "the waste materials of the city will be recovered and reused" leading to a space which will be “more than plastic free, Dropcity will be plastic full”.

Dropcity is conceived as an “anti-institutional” space that will fill the gap left by Italian universities and public institutions. This is the certainty that unites both the founder Andrea Caputo and Angela Rui, curator, scholar, and director of Dropcity’s Public Programme. “Italian Institutions look more to the past than the present, so, I say, let’s talk about the present!” Rui exclaims with conviction. “Universities are not catching up” and with the current changes that architecture and design are undergoing, Dropcity will be a space of production - not only physical but also intellectual. The series of 22 talks and four themes curated for the “activation” of Dropcity during this first Design Week tackle precisely these challenges, starting a debate that will, hopefully, animate this segment of Milan whilst also engaging the more than “12,000 architects practicing their profession in Milan and the community of more than 3,500 graduated and diploma holders which graduate from the city’s universities yearly.” Rui is keen to stress the importance, for example, of the debate on Post-Exhaustion that emerged during one of the talks held in Via Sammartini on June 8th. “Exhaustion pertains not only to the Earth’s resources, but also to our body and mind” she explains. The rapid changes in our society often force us to stay connected and produce 24/7 whilst, what emerged from that debate, is that we shouldn’t just care about the ecology of the planet but also that of the brain, recovering our lost time for critical and imaginative creativity. Another important topic discussed throughout the week pertains, according to Rui, to the end of the Cartesian dichotomy of nature-culture. “There are many worlds, many realities” so instead of creating barriers - she explains – as architects and designers we should concentrate on creating interspecies, intergenerational bridges since “the world can be re-designed, we can reconfigure outdated, imposed codes”.

Looking back to the first temporary activation of Dropcity and as a young studio which was invited to participate to this first experiment, along with other realities as (ab)Normal, HPO!, Fosbury, Ganko, SuperVoid, (amongst others) at KoozArch we are thrilled by the conversations and projects that such a space can yield. The ambitions of this new space - as one which intends to support and give space to young professionals by engaging these realities not only in the finished project, but actively also in the design of the spaces, reflects a collective approach and methodology which is seldom seen in our contemporary landscape. Dropcity pledges to be a space which is in continuous transformation, growing through and with the ideas of the younger generations which will be invited to explore this as a testing ground for different ways of thinking and researching the limits and potential of the disciplines of architecture and design.

Reflecting upon this first experiment, Caputo stresses that “Dropcity is here to stay”, reminding us that this new urban model (unseen in both its scale and ambition in Europe) is set to open in 2024. “We took advantage of the incredible opportunity offered by the Milanese Design Week and the flocks of creatives who would be scouring its busy streets, to activate and test Dropcity both as space for the design and production of objects (thus in line with the fair’s spirit”) but more importantly as a laboratory of ideas. More than anything else, however, Caputo believes that the greatest achievement of the past week’s activation are precisely the weeks and conversations that preceded them: “I saw important signs of participation and empathy, of cohesion amongst the diverse creatives who participated to the initiative each with a strong identity and tackling unique themes and challenges which face our contemporary condition”, a promising and reassuring thought during such challenging and uncertain times.

Notes

1 Drop City was an artists' community started in southern Colorado in 1965 by Clark Richert, filmmaker Gene Bernofsky and artists Joann Bernofsky and Richard Kallweit. Inspired by the architectural ideas of Buckminster Fuller and Steve Baer, the members of the community constructed domes based on the geometric solid, the "triacontahedron" and other "zonohedra" to house their studios and living quarters. Source: http://www.clarkrichert.com/drop-city