Expanding (on) the Core. The QT8 Project in Milan

The Quartiere Sperimentale della Ottava Triennale [Experimental Neighborhood of the Eighth Milan Triennale], located in the northwestern periphery of Milan, survives as a significant chapter in the history of modern house and town planning. It formed part of the fast-moving expansion of the city towards the outskirts during the postwar era and represented a rupture with the past. Encompassing the investigations of those days into the threefold standardization-prefabrication-industrialization, it addressed the cogent issue of housing, while expressing a deep interest in the creation of a new urban sense of spatiality and communality. Advocating the autonomy of the suburbs, as well as their integration into the city, QT8 offered a flexible interpretation of the symbiotic relationship between center and periphery. This paper aims to provide a deeper understanding of how QT8 comprehended the term “core” as able to suggest more than a mere location. In so doing, it discusses its intersections with the broader discussions on the development of the modern city formed in those days, its vision to establish an urban social space at its center, and its ability to inform contemporary debates on the core/periphery dichotomy.

Iñaki Abalos

Professor in Residence, Department of Architecture, GSD, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, USA

Orazio Carpenzano

Dean, Facoltà di Architettura, Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome

Yung Ho Chang

Professor of Architecture, College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University, Shanghai, China

Winka Dubbeldam

Founder of Archi-Tectonics, Miller Professor and Chair of Architecture at Stuart Weitzman School of Design

Brian Ford

Professor Emeritus, Department of Architecture & Built Environment, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

Hsinming Fung

Professor, SCI-Arc, Los Angeles CA, USA

Carlo Gasparrini

Professor of Urbanism, Dipartimento di Architettura, Universita' degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Naples, Italy

Rahul Mehrotra

Professor of Urban Design and Planning, GSD, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, USA

Antoine Picon

Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology, GSD, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, USA

Mónica Ponce de León

Dean, School of Architecture, Princeton University, Princeton NJ, USA

Jane Rendell

Professor, The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, London, UK

Peter Rich

Professor of Architecture, Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg, South Africa

Michael Speaks

Dean, School of Architecture, Syracuse University, Syracuse NY, USA

Martha Thorne

Hon FRIBA, Hon COAM, Senior Advisor for The OBEL Award

C David Tseng

Dean, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Chiao-Tung University, Taipei, Taiwan

Sarah Whiting

Dean, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, USA

Li Xiangning

Deputy Dean, College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University, Shanghai, China

Expanding (on) the Core. The QT8 Project in Milan

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