Among the audience: the Rector of Politecnico Ferruccio Resta, the Alumnus Renzo Piano, the Minister of University and Research Maria Cristina Messa, the Governor of Region Lombardia Attilio Fontana and the Mayor of Milan Giuseppe Sala.
The project that comes from afar: we started mentioning it in the spring of 2017 (read more on its history on MAP # 1) thanks to the idea concieved and donated by Renzo Piano to Politecnico , and later designed by another great Alumnus, Ottavio Di Blasi - ODB & Partners (his interview on MAP # 7 ). The two architects conceived and developed a radical reorganization of the spaces in via Bonardi based on the philosophy that Piano defines as "mending of the territory": "mending" and connecting, in fact, are the concepts of the new Campus, designed as a space open to the whole city , an urban park that connects the Ponzio park with the greenery of Piazza Leonardo da Vinci.
Today is with great joy that Politecnico opens up to its community and to Milanese citizens a tree-lined space of about 9000 square meters, new buildings (for a total of 4200 square meters) including the LABora laboratories (we talked about it here) and the network of laboratories, multifunctional classrooms, spaces for teaching and more. A project that is part of the vision of Politecnico, always mindful of the deep symbiosis between the university and the neighborhood that surrounds it which is revealing of Politecnico's “value of making the city ”, as explained by Emilio Faroldi, Vice Rector of the Milan Polytechnic, in a recent interview for Alumni .
“From 2017 until today we have made 120 million euros in investments”, explains in a note the Rector of Politecnico di Milano, prof. Ferruccio Resta , who continues: “despite the many difficulties of this last period, we have opened 20 construction sites, from culminating with the beautiful Aula Magna dedicated to our dear and famous Alumnus: engineer Giampiero Pesenti. Our thanks go to the Pesenti family, as well as to the Region Lombardia, to the Cariplo Foundation, to the Alumni and citizens who contributed to the realization of the Campus. The 'public res' must return to represent the beauty and quality that we have inherited from our history". The construction site of the new Architecture Campus was also possible thanks to the financial contribution of many Alumni donors .
Through the inaguration of the new Campus today, we are symbolically opening a new phase for our university. This is how we have set in motion a post-Covid educational program that is worth, in its first pilot phase, over 15 million euros", continues the Rector: a phase in which the commitment is to find a balance between teaching in the presence and new technologies without giving up experimentation and that goes hand in hand with the commitment to research and innovation.
The Rector also cites, in this regard, the new Technology Foresight Center (we talk about it in a recent Digital Talk at this link ), created to understand the potential of high-impact technologies: from quantum technologies to hydrogen; from sustainable mobility to the potential of data; from additive manufacturing to green chemistry, to biomedical nanotechnologies, to space exploration.
"We traced the profile of a modern, international and forward-looking university . A plan that can be successful on one condition: by being accompanied by structural reforms that give adequate responses to our students and our researchers, to their expectations of today and their needs of tomorrow ", continues the Rector. President Mattarella concludes:
Credits foto: Matteo Bergamini e Enrico Cano © Lab Immagine Design POLIMI (progettazione, produzione e gestione di prodotti comunicativi) Dipartimento di DESIGN, Politecnico di Milano – 02-2399.7805/06 – labimmagine-design@polimi.it
