With a direct linkage to the original Drop City—one of the first counterculture American utopias developed during the 1960s, itself architecturally inspired by the works and spirit of Buckminster Fuller—and based on the principles of sustainability, research and collective innovation, the new Dropcity aims to be a space for production, not only physical but also intellectual.

Dropcity initially unveiled its potential a year ago, during June 2022, when a series of temporary installations and public programs introduced and described different processes and objectives to reclaim the abandoned spaces of the Magazzini Raccordati and its surrounding urban environment. Building on that previous effort, Dropcity Convention 2023 is back to offer a foretaste of the cultural potential that will be produced by the Centre for Architecture and Design in its final form in 2024—a laboratory of ideas and a testing ground for different ways of thinking and perceiving architecture and design.

Starting April 15th and through the 23th, Dropcity’s 2023 potent Public Program—curated by Anneke Abhelakh and titled On Public Agency— consists of a series of lectures and talks that speculate on the future of the architecture practice: what does it mean to be an architect today?, what is at stake?, what are the modes of sharing and collaborations needed to (re)gain agency? Prominent practitioners, including the likes of Reinier de Graaf, Florian Idenburg, Anna Puigjaner, Christian Kerez, Mireia Luzárraga, Jeannette Kuo and Kersten Gears will establish conversations with young Italy-based architecture offices, aiming to promote creative and productive discussions that will reverberate through the whole convention.

Because of Dropcity’s location and future vision, adaptive reuse strategies and the power of conceptual ideas to integrate the Magazzini Raccordati with its immediate urban fabric are of central importance to the project. Hence, Dropcity Convention 2023 showcases the ten finalist design ideas from the Tunnel Evangelion competition (organised by Reuse Italy), awarding the winner proposals of the competition during the finale of the Public Program calendar. In this same spirit, the work of a group of SCI-Arc student’s—developed during the Fall 2022 “Role play” vertical studio taught by Elena Manferdini—will show how urban-interior collective working spaces can actually look like inside the Magazzini tunnels.

Meanwhile, looking to bring to the foreground the works and drawings of one of the most important yet neglected Italian architects of the 20th century, Salvatore Porcaro (curator), Pino Musi (photographer) and HPO (designers) present Arrigo Arrighetti. A public architect, a powerful retrospective, composed of archive materials, drawings and carefully crafted photographs that will portray Arrighetti’s deep commitment to social architecture.

The binding relationship between design and photography is further explored in Why should we care about an archive? where the work that Ramak Fazel produced during his 15 year Milanese period gets reinterpreted and presented.

In dialogue with the urgent inquiries and concerns brought to the table by the Public Program protagonists, the roster of participants at Dropcity explore a multiplicity of approaches to architectural understanding and design potential. The Thinking Piece / Obscure Solutions, a collaboration between We+, Takt Project, Sae Honda, Satomi Minoshima and Takuto Ohta sheds light on invisible social issues and encourages people to rethink the realities of the world we live in.Milan-based collective agency (ab)Normal exhibits Europelago, exploring new ways of collaborating and sharing knowledge across borders and cultures in the European scale while SKWAT’s RE(public) aims to highlight the usually invisible backstage of construction sites to create more democratic urban spaces.

Following the same collaborative motivation, Francesca Crotti and Thomas Ibrahim present SOCII, a program of participatory installations by invited artists who predominantly work with recovered, recycled, and found materials, including those salvaged from the previous 2022 Dropcity project. In the same line of inquiry, FLOW – Fluid Material Cycle, by Daisuke Yamamoto Design Studio, challenges the common pattern of “think -> build -> waste”—ubiquitous in modern construction paradigms—to propose an alternative “waste -> think -> re-create” logic, allowing us to envision a new circulation of building resources and construction materials. In parallel, DDAA / DDAA LAB Hackability of the Stool promises to challenge common assumptions in relation to modernist design, mass production and consumption. Additionally, the reuse of industrial waste is explored with creativity and imagination through the projects on display by DEKASEGI in collaboration with RE;CODE and a group of 9 Japanese, Korean and Chinese designers.

Furthermore, The exhibition Prepper's Pantry: Objects that Save Lives at mudac (Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts) and curated by Anniina Koivu, presents a first introduction to new broad-based research on preparedness, showcasing an array of objects that could be useful in emergency situations.

Committed to become an archive and reference library specifically dedicated to the field of architecture and design and accessible to the entire city of Milan, the Dropcity Convention 2023 will showcase publications from independent publishing houses, including Humboldt, NERO and Quodlibet, a trio of editorial endeavours interested in philosophy, travel literature, collaborative practices, design pedagogy and ecological and post-humanist thinking in relation to architecture.

Against this heterogeneous, ever-expanding and rich background, KoozArch will invite everyone to play. Aside from featuring a series of critical insights into the works of several Dropcity participants, KoozArch’s presence at the Magazzini will create a shared dimension of exchange and insight, inviting architects, designers and students to play fair at the fair play, re-imagining the legacy and agency of architecture within a shared space of playful, yet critical, reflection.

The ambitions introduced during the first year of Dropcity are, without any doubt, met and even surpassed during this second iteration of the project. Dropcity continues to consolidate itself as a space where young professionals can engage in fruitful collaborative discussions, actively reflecting on the methodologies of contemporary practice. KoozArch is proud to be part of this unprecedented effort that pledges to expose the critical ideas of younger generations, exploring and testing new horizons for architecture and design.

This editorial was developed as part of the media partnership with Dropcity Convention 2023, winner of the public call Festival Architettura - 2nd edition, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture.