GRZ.0 Final Seminar & Exhibition

June 9th, 2019

Former industrial buildings where, through some very simple objects, many religions are practised; gardens where, through an old carpet, an extension of a sitting room is created; a name-less square where, through bottle-caps or ropes, kids can play all together beyond any cultural background. The main square used for car washing; material fences and mental boundaries as an answer to urban fears related to ‘otherness’: migrants, teenagers going to a professional school, political activists.

This is the link to browse through students’ work and this the link to a video summary of the semester.


Gratosoglio Ground Zero is a workshop where students in the third year of a Bachelor’s Course in Architecture have been stimulated to observe the relationship between people, spaces and practices in Gratosoglio, a big housing estate in the South of Milan. Ground Zero has a twofold meaning: on the one hand, going back to the roots of places, keeping the project dimension in the background; on the other hand, exploring uses and practices occurring at the ground floors – interiors and exteriors, public and publicly-used spaces.

Through the guide of an expert of urban ethnography, a professional photographer, and an expert of domestic culture, students explored different ways of observing, representing and narrating practices, the places where they occur, the spatial devices and objects mobilized to produce new forms of appropriation of the space.

Discoveries came from explorations of everyday practices and small dimensions: micro-spaces of encounter, but also more or less visible boundaries. Ground zero reveals itself as a place of big potentialities, contrasts and surprises.

Here, some pics of the Final Exhibition Opening

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