Here we are...
Floating from the productive territory to that of the slow old rhythms.
Vicino e lontano da Milano.
In un territorio lento e schizofrenico.
In the middle.
This is the premise to the project for the development of the territory around Vimercate which inspired the following images. The research (realized as part of my Degree in Urban Planning and Territorial Politics at the Politecnico of Milano) had the aim of proposing a new image and development strategy for Vimercate and its surroundings. The area currently suffers from the crisis of the High-Tech Industries, which guaranteed its prosperity for the last thirty years.
The territory, situated in the North-East of Milan, is composed by different personalities: the "Italian Silicon Valley", linked to the presence of great High-Tech Industries; the "Brianza Est", characterized by urban development based on family town houses; and that of the environment, thanks to the presence of parks and areas for the preservation of agriculture. Therefore, a site that can be observed from different points of view, without being able to see the global pattern of the elements composing it. The photographic distance which I propose within this research tries to find a key to overcome this fragmentation. Thus the aim is to dwell on where these geographies (apparently) in disagreement meet, on those Fringes which reveal traces of the multiplicity of Vimercate and its surroundings.
Fringes because they are edges of territory where Industry and Agriculture fuse, in between the constantly increasing outskirts of the city and the protected natural territories.
Fringes because they are interrupted places, contended by opposites that, after all, notwithstanding seem to find a balance and a form of cohabitation which is not easy, nor assuming.
