UNStudio, UNSense’s Proposal for Health-Themed Urban District Chosen for Further Design Development UNStudio, UNSense’s Proposal for Health-Themed Urban District Chosen for Further Design Development
News - 17 May 2021

UNStudio, UNSense’s Proposal for Health-Themed Urban District Chosen for Further Design Development

We are delighted to announce that the concept proposal from UNStudio and UNSense for a new intergenerational health-themed urban district in Milan has been selected by Unipol for further design development.

The Bruzzano site

Bruzzano is a disctrict located on the northern edge of Milan. UNStudio and Unipol firmly believe the future of the Milanese outskirts is dependent on projects like the development of the site in Bruzzano: that metropolitan integration and connection of Milan to its surroundings is an essential step towards a sustainable and resilient future of the city.

UNStudio’s proposal for the Bruzzano masterplan competition aimed to define new targets for the city of Milan integrating overarching metropolitan and European strategy. The sustainable environmental strategy could be part of any new city development, thus, carbon neutrality targets, biodiversity, urban climate resilience and life quality are base targets that the design aims to achieve.

The goal of our proposal was to learn from the existing conditions and turn them into opportunities by forming a new neighbourhood with a strong identity and an enhanced sense of safety and security. UNStudio’s design for the Bruzzano masterplan proposes to form a new community where health, nature and people are at the centre of the urban design. With this, we aim to start a new renaissance of urban life on the outskirts, centred on well-being and healthy living.

To achieve neighbourhood-level inclusivity and accessibility we imagined an ecosystem in which people, nature and technology live in symbiosis. To achieve this the concept follows three important themes:

‘Nurture-Nature’ to create a built environment affecting healthy behavioural decisions and public spaces that foster positive emotions. To establish the strong presence of purposeful green areas that connect different smart green ecosystems with different lifestyles.

‘Inclusive Neighbourhood’: to integrate nature and human living, different demographics and social groups with the intention to broaden social and urban diversity. A loose network of neighbourhoods where diversity is embedded in the urban fabric which is able to attract a multiversity of users from younger to older generations.

‘Care Communities’ integrating healthy living, healthcare, technology and community connections. The presence of a hospital on the site triggers the concept of a so called ‘Care Community’, based on health, care and wellbeing: a completely new social quality in life defined by urban design.

The boundaries between traditional hospitals and more comfortable environments to receive health services are becoming more fluid. In Bruzzano, together with UNSense, we saw an opportunity to introduce a new form of a flexible typology of ‘Care Communities’, forming a decentralised health and healthcare themed district with technology bringing healthcare services closer to the end users and encouraging healthy lifestyle choices as part of the everyday life.

In UNStudio’s proposal, supported by UNSense, technology forms an integrated part of the design that can set up short and long term targets, execute, monitor and enhance built and green environment. The project has the potential to become an innovative testing ground for healthy green tech, used for testing new systems which can be scaled and used throughout the neighbourhood and the city and adapted for other areas in the future, when proven successful.

Next steps

Following Unipol’s enthusiastic response to UNStudio’s proposals for the Bruzzano site, they have decided to seize the opportunity to further investigate the feasibility of the concepts embedded in the masterplan. In the coming months, UNStudio, in collaboration with SBGA and a multi-disciplinary team, together with Unipol, will work intensively on the further development of the masterplan.

Watch this space…