Caduti di Marcinelle Street, Milan.
Below the busy bypass bridge, a desert parkand a putrid small lake suffocate in a static silence. A new vitality is essential.
The Rubattino underbridge requalification project was launched promising to give back a purpose and dignity to that degraded location.
Due to the significant dimensions of the bridge, space underneath it would have welcomed four different projects, to be built one next to the other and entrusted to various working teams.
During the survey on site, cars keep hurtling fast on the long bridge, still among those great pillars nothing but few weak sounds arrive. And we feel small, supported, "like dwarfs on giants' shoulders." We start thinking aboutAtlas, the muscular titan of the Greek mythology who held up the sky with his shoulders. That bridge, after all, seems to resemble it: an imposing and invisible onlooker at the service of humans, trustworthy custodian of many transient stories.
We decide to make that tacit character visible, transforming it into an anthropomorphic building laying underneath the same bridge it appears to sustain. The structureinterior spaces acquire a function associated with the body parts they are in correspondence with; water veins on the floor cross the rooms and highlight the symbiosis of the complex with the surroundingenvironment.
Located in a district full of offices, the stone giant's purpose is to welcome local workers during their lunch break, offering them arestaurant space where to go for a quick and good quality meal - with the possibility ofordering either online or on-site - and a relaxing area to lie down before going back to their offices. On the outside, a wisteria plant, which is a symbol of friendship and greeting, climbs up on the giant's arms.