Projects

From 2019 BAM_BIBLIOTECA DEGLI ALBERI MILANO

BAM is a project promoted by the Riccardo Catella Foundation.

Thanks to an innovative public-private partnership between the City of Milan and COIMA, the Foundation is responsible for the management, safety, maintenance and cultural program of the public park BAM_Biblioteca degli Alberi Milano.
BAM is more than a park: it is a contemporary botanical garden in the heart of Milan where to live cultural experiences in contact with nature.

The BAM_Biblioteca degli Alberi Milano, landmark and green heart of Milan’s innovative skyline, with its 10 hectares of extension and its extraordinary botanical collection, is a unique example in Italy.

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2018 PORTA NUOVA SMART CAMP

Promoted in collaboration with Dynamo Camp and L’Abilità Onlus, Porta Nuova Smart Camp is an inclusive experimental project, which offers to children with serious pathologies and disabilities, the possibility of living public spaces and green areas, within the area of Porta Nuova of Milan. The main goal is to offer to children affected by serious and chronic diseases free recreational and entertaining experiences, contributing to the development of confidence on their abilities and potential. The first edition of Porta Nuova Smart Camp has involved 45 children in a week of creative, expressive, funny and exciting activities based on the Recreational Therapy of Dynamo Camp and coordinated by a team of professionals and volunteers. The activities took place in the headquarters of Fondazione Riccardo Catella, in the adjacent public garden and inside the headquarters of some companies based in the Porta Nuova district.

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2017 - 2018 VIDEO INSTALLATION: BIBLIOTECA DEGLI ALBERI. A PARK EXPERIENCE

Promoted under the patronage of the Municipality of Milan and Regione Lombardia, a video-installation 360° immersive into the Biblioteca degli Alberi, an urban park to be enjoyed. While waiting for the realization of the new park designed by the Inside Outside | Petra Blaisse studio, the installation at the ground floor of the Foundation, from September to January 2018, described all the benefits derived from nature in urban contexts and the positive contribute that parks give to urban lives’ quality.

2017 MILANO OPEN PORTRAIT

Under the patronage of the Municipality of Milan, the Politecnico University and the Triennale Design Museum, between the 11st and the 18th June 2017, a human-size Camera Obscura has been installed in the area of Porta Nuova. The project, a mixture between landscape photography, design and public art, has been conceived as a link between Milano Photo Week and Milano Arch Week. The device took a monumental and dynamic portrait of a specific area of the Porta Nuova district and its daily life.

2016 - 2017 MICOLTIVO NEL PARCO

Promoted within the Porta Nuova Smart Community, a program of initiatives for all the citizens, imagined for the discovery of the evolution of the park Biblioteca degli Alberi, the third biggest urban park of Milan, and for an actively participation in its development. The park, designed by Inside Outside | Petra Blaisse, with its 9 hectares, offers to the public a mosaic made of paths through thematic gardens, circular forests, aromatic herbs and flowers, which are perfect areas for relax and open air activities.

From 2015 EDUCATIONAL VEGETABLE GARDEN COLTIVIAMO INSIEME!

Coltiviamo Insieme!, promoted by Fondazione Riccardo Catella, is a program of educational activities for children and families, focused on nutritional education and urban farming. Coltiviamo Insieme! is made of weekly laboratories from April to October in the vegetable garden inside the public garden around the headquarter of the Foundation, in partnership with professional agronomists. Since 2016, have been realized more than 40 educational laboratories, which have involved more than 300 children.

2015 MICOLTIVO THE GREEN CIRCLE

Promoted in partnership together with the Nicola Trussardi Foundation and Confagricoltura, the project consisted in a circular path dedicated to urban farming, built around a 50.000 sm of wheatfield in the center of Porta Nuova, the work of land art by Agnes Denes, Wheatfield. Inside the path, an area of 4.000 sm of vegetable gardens and orchards open to the citizens with an educational program on farming and nutrition for children and families.

2015 PORTA NUOVA SMART COMMUNITY

A program promoted from 2015, in order to make day-by-day Porta Nuova more dynamic and sustainable and involve the community in cultural initiatives on topics such as environment, wellness, architecture and public spaces. Starting from 2016, Fondazione Riccardo Catella has activated a membership program for the Porta Nuova Smart Community, addressed to citizens, companies and stores based on the area, aiming to promote a sustainable lifestyle and an improvement of life’s quality of the overall area.

2014 - 2015 L’ITALIA SI ALZA

A project promoted in partnership with Associazione Cometa, with the aim of producing a new chair for urban open spaces, designed by the students of the Oliver Twist school, through a formative program leaded by three designers.

From 2012 MICOLTIVO, ORTO A SCUOLA

A project born with the mission of incentivizing the discovery of nature within urban context since childhood, of stimulating in new generations healthy food behaviors and active lifestyle and of fighting the onset of chronical diseases derived from unhealthy dietary habits. Developed in public schools, it is being implemented on two different levels: the realization and the maintenance of the vegetable gardens and an educational program on the garden, tailored for each school.

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2010 - 2011 PUBLIC SPACES RIQUALIFICATION

Between 2010 and 2011, under the Distretto Urbano del Commercio Isola (DUC Isola) promoted by the Municipality of Milan, Fondazione Riccardo Catella realized two interventions of requalification of public spaces within the Isola district. The Foundation coordinated with the Municipality the initiatives, interacting with the territory, designing and following the realization of the requalification of via Borsieri and the green areas of piazzale Archinto.

2010 CHILDREN ON CONSTRUCTION SITE

Fondazione Riccardo Catella involved three construction sites active in Milan, beside the one of Porta Nuova, for a whole weekend in May 2010, in order to open them to all the children from five to eleven years old, together with their parents. Visitors were involved in several typical building activities, with the aim of discovering all the mechanisms that make a construction site working well and safely. The event was preceded by a communication campaign on the fencing boards around the sites, which portrayed the builders at work, together with their children, with the goal of raising city’s awareness on construction site’s safety and illustrating the daily work and life behind the fences.

2009 REPOSITON OF THE MEMORIAL TO THE VICTIMS OF ISOLA BY CARLO RAMOUS

In December 2009, asked by the residents of the Isola district and in collaboration with the Municipality of Milan and local associations, Fondazione Riccardo Catella repositioned the memorial to the victims of Isola by Carlo Ramous to Piazzale Segrino, a location which gives it greater prominence. At the same time, the green spaces around were requalified.

2009 THE CITY DRAWN BY CHILDREN

Fondazione Riccardo Catella activated a listening path, designed to primary school students, asking children to draw the way they would like their district to be improved. The drawings composed a large outdoor exhibition, which ran from April until May 2009.

2008 SCHOLARSHIP “EMILIO CAZZANI – GIUSEPPE SALA”

An initiative promoted by Fondazione Riccardo Catella in 2008, in order to support young Italian talents, consisting in a scholarship dedicated to “Emilio Cazzani – Giuseppe Sala” for young graduated or university students from the course of study of architecture. The scholarship permitted to the winner to enroll to the “Master of Architecture II Degree Program” of Yale University, Connecticut (US) , one of the most prestigious and innovative university in the international scenario within the fields of architecture and urbanism.

2008 THE PARK OF THE CHILDREN’S RIGHTS

An innovative playground, also accessible to children with disabilities, designed by worldwide recognized designers. During the Salone del Mobile 2008, the Foundation opened the “Children’s rights’ Pathway, containing the prototypes of the playground equipment ready to be tested until June. Some of those, today are installed in the public garden around the Foundation.

2007 MILANO SHOWS ITSELF. 1 KM WITH GABRIELE BASILICO

From October to January 2008, through 150 pictures by Gabriele Basilico exhibited in an open-air-exhibition on the fences of the Porta Nuova’s construction site, a tale on the city and its global changes was offered to the community. Collaterally to the huge retrospective on Basilico’s production, at the Foundation was installed the photographic exhibition “Passaggio 35” by the reporter Marco Garofalo, a journey through the urban transformations of the Isola District.

From 2007 MAINTENANCE AND CULTURAL MANAGEMENT OF THE PUBLIC GARDEN

Thanks to a partnership with the Municipality of Milan, the Foundation manages and maintains the public garden of Via G. De Castillia, 28, guaranteeing its safety. The Foundation takes care of its ordinary and extraordinary maintenance, of the cleanliness and management of the playground and enlivens its spaces through activities open to the community.

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2005 A NEW BENCH FOR MILAN

A competition in collaboration with the Urban Land Institute (ULI) that promoted the design of a bench for street furniture that registered the vote of more than 70.000 Milanese citizens. Some benches of the winner type have been installed in the public garden around Fondazione Riccardo Catella.