Repurposing and renovation have gained greater appeal in the years since the overwhelming success of The High Line, extending to a variety of applications and structures. At the recent Milan Design Week, MAD took this to a new level by showcasing their proposal for a new masterplan of Milan, which transforms dilapidated rail yards into a series of thriving new city districts, or micro-systems.

According to MAD, these spatial districts, termed “City of Connections,” “City of Green,” “City of Living,” “City of Culture,” and “City of Resources" each address "a vernacular development typical of Italian cities, where various typological elements and scales are overlapped into dense systems of relations. Designing first at the human scale within recognizable landmarks, the broader urban scale is connected to smaller ones through the interjection of topographic landscapes, serving to unify the continually changing relations of the pedestrian, city, and nature. Each of the yards, following the necessities of their adjacent neighborhoods, will thus take on new lives and functions within their sites’ dense histories."

The Scalo Farini and Valtellina sites feature three dense villages at their center grouped around a repurposed freight warehouse. This placement is to make the most of the organizational potential of the freight warehouse, which provides a hub for the traditional Italian courtyard styled housing developments. Two eye-catching, MAD-signature-style mixed-use towers sprout from a plinth, providing a visually appealing bridge between the past and future, as well as easy access to the Porta Garibaldi train station. As Ma Yansong explained, "The vitality of the future city does not rely on top-down modernist planning, but exists in the symbiosis of multi-layer urban elements, and the chemistry among them.”