The Milan Arch Week is back again this year. Now in its fifth edition, this year the event sees Stefano Boeri as artistic director and Nina Bissoli and Matteo Ruta as curator

From Wednesday 7 to Sunday 11 June 2023 it returns Milano Arch Week, the event dedicated to architecture, urban transformations and the future of cities founded and promoted since 2017 by the Municipality of Milan, Polytechnic of Milan and Triennale Milan.

The forthcoming edition is now the fifth.

The artistic direction is Stefano Boeri, President of Triennale Milano, while the curatorship is Nina Bassoli, curator for Architecture, regeneration urban, city of Triennale Milano, and Matteo Ruta, professor at the Milan Polytechnic.

This year's theme, Waiting for Peripheries, is proposed as a moment of discussion on the social and cultural energies of the city, aimed at initiating a collective reflection on the suburbs.

The June edition was brought forward by a two-day event in September 2022 which opened up a broad and participatory discussion.

What can we learn from marginal areas? What do we expect from the house? Is there a new way of conceiving social housing? What are the boundaries of the center? Are the neighborhoods islands or are they rather thematic layers? And again: how can we build a solid social infrastructure capable of penetrating every neighborhood? Can schools be the new basis for it? These are some of the questions that will guide Milano Arch Week 2023.

International architects and designers, emerging studios and professionals, urban planners and landscape architects have been invited to reflect on these issues.

Milan Arch Week 2023: the guests

Among the confirmed guests of this edition, Iñaki Carnicero, internationally renowned architect who was appointed by the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez Secretary General for the Urban Agenda and Architecture and who promoted the drafting of the first state law on the quality of architecture, the German studio b+ Arno Brandlhuber, which has always stood out for its experimental approach, the Catalan studio Harquitectes, Kersten Geers of the Belgian studio OFFICE, and the Japanese architect Toshiko Mori, co-director of “Domus” for 2023.

The 2023 format: architecture in the city

This year the event is renewed and offers itself in an unprecedented guise, expanding its borders and activating other venues spread throughout the city: schools, theatres, associations, libraries, neighborhood gardens, 40 places that trace a network that from the center reaches outermost neighborhoods.

The event thus opens up to dialogue with the various institutions and districts of the city, involving local activities and initiatives, and narrating the polycentric, complex and vital nature of Milan.

Each reality involved proposes a reflection on the themes of the event and was selected through the call launched last September, to which institutions, associations, local realities, cooperatives, citizens, foundations, researchers, artists, professionals, student groups and design. The call represented an important platform for reconnaissance of the activities present in the area and for listening to the interests of the inhabitants of the city: from social housing to school, from the idea of the neighborhood to the conception of the center and the suburbs.

Milan Arch Week 2023: the program

The program of this network spread throughout the area will start as early as Saturday 3 June with over 50 appointments which will continue for the entire duration of the event. As always, there will be tours, itineraries and explorations of the city.

Among these, the itineraries created by Urban Center Milano and the Urban Regeneration Department of the Municipality of Milan, which will guide the participants in discovering the future potential of three areas of the city, object of interventions that are changing its face: Crescenzago, Lorenteggio/Giambellino and Central Station/Loreto. These tours will also allow you to enhance the ancient historic city centers on the occasion of the centenary of the aggregation of the neighboring villages to the city.

Milan Arch Week will also be an opportunity to talk about the six winning projects of the San Vittore ideas competition, space for beauty, promoted by the Milan Triennale and the Francesco di Cataldo Prison – San Vittore, with the involvement of the Maimeri Foundation, Shifton and the Amici della Nave Association and with the support of the Milan Community Foundation – City, South West, South East, Martesana onlus.

The project intends to promote a new conception of prison house through the redesign tation of some prison spaces to change their perception and improve their functionality.

The Prison Project will also be held in San Vittore and at the Seconda Casa di Reclusione in Milan-Bollate: walks & talks, an initiative that is part of the Off Campus proposal of the Politecnico di Milano.

Milan Arch Week 2023: the venues

The Politecnico di Milano and Triennale Milano will remain the main venues of Milano Arch Week, hosting work tables, talks, lectures and workshops as in past editions.

The event will be inaugurated on Wednesday 7 June at the Politecnico di Milano. The appointments in the Milan Triennale will be concentrated from Friday 9 to Sunday 11 June.

During the day, working tables dedicated to some central themes of our present are scheduled: School, a table that will work on the future of school planning (in collaboration with the Agnelli Foundation); Casa, dedicated to issues relating to living (in collaboration with Federica Verona); Lavoro, which will carry on a reflection on the theme of work in architecture.

A further working table will be dedicated to Ukraine and in particular to the reconstruction of the city of Irpin' (in collaboration with the Irpin Reconstruction Summit). For each theme, a call will be opened to collect adhesions to the working tables and the final draft of a document with a series of concrete proposals is foreseen.