Sierroterapico Park in Milan is bordered by the uneven contours of a canal, as well as by via Giovanni Segantini, an avenue connecting Piazza Arcole to Piazza Serafino Belfanti. At the end of the 90s, subject to significant pressures regarding property rights, this public space requested to be reclassified when five residential buildings were constructed.

Our proposal anticipates the inclusion of the building intervention within a landscape, where the city gradually gives way to plant presence. From east to west, double alignments of lime and maple trees reshape the avenue and adjacent parking lots. This “rambla” loosens and opens up the urban blocks, and provides access to arranged gardens, and then to tree-filled theaters of greenery whose random order of planting takes the place of the fixed urban pattern of the preceding alignments.

The heart of the park opens up onto a vast clearing. A countryside shaded meadow stretches out under the old existing trees, left untouched during the construction work. Like a boundless playground, the meadow leads down towards the high grasses of a restored riparian area. Willow, poplar, and alder trees form an ecological reserve where the specific, and currently threatened, flora and fauna of wet climates are sheltered.