"The Culinary Hub"

2025

Igor Peraza

Aamna Jasem , Ali Dhafer, Hend Ali

The Segrate Marconi district in Milan stands between industrial memory and urban renewal. Once shaped by warehouses and production, the site now offers an opportunity to transform forgotten industrial land into a shared civic and ecological landscape. Located between residential districts, the Green Kilometer and Segrate Lake, the project becomes a social connector and a space for regeneration. Existing industrial structures are reinterpreted through adaptive reuse, while open pedestrian pathways encourage movement, gathering, learning, and exchange. We conceived our vision of the project as an architectural ecosystem where landscape, structure, and human life come together. The ground level remains open and porous for public activity, while elevated volumes create lightness, rhythm, and visual connection. The program is organized into two layers: culinary spaces at the public level, supporting food, exchange, and community, and housing units above, offering privacy, reflection, and shared living. A key feature is the algae-based façade, which acts as a living environmental system by filtering sunlight, purifying air, and expressing the idea of regeneration. Terraces, courtyards, vertical cores, and greenery bring light and movement through the building. The project also grows as a modular timber network, allowing spaces to expand, shrink, or change based on future needs. Student housing, community spaces, classrooms, workshops, gardens, and public plazas can be added or reconfigured over time. Bridges between the modules act as social corridors and carry algae tubes that process organic waste and absorb carbon dioxide, turning circulation into living infrastructure. Overall, the project reimagines Segrate as a model of reciprocity, where architecture, community, food culture, and ecological order grow together toward a regenerative future.